


First Of Her Name

by CaptainTarthister



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon, Cunnilingus, Domestic Violence, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Infiltration, Light Bondage, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, Sexual Abuse, Sibling Incest, Spying, Underage Sex, Violence, Woman on Top, facesitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 17
Words: 133,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainTarthister/pseuds/CaptainTarthister
Summary: What happens in a universe where Brienne loses against Humfrey Wagstaff and marries him? Where Jaime and Cersei marry  and rule Westeros after the War of the Five Kings?Trigger Warning: Scenes of dubious consent and sexual violence
Relationships: Brienne of Tarth/ Humfrey Wagstaff, Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 350
Kudos: 243





	1. Brienne I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catherineflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/gifts).



> A birthday gift (several days late, I'm sorry!) for my bestie, bestest of the best Catherineflowers! I can't say her prompt since it will give away a major plot point in the story. 
> 
> What I will say is she's been a goddess of patience and understanding as I whined and growled about the alternate universe of the story. The writing process has been a lot similar to undoing a puzzle and forming all these pieces together again but differently, and in a way that still makes sense. MAYBE.
> 
> ******  
> Please take note of the tags and the warning and this other warning about triggering content in the story.

For striking the lord of the Sapphire Isle, Brienne was locked in her chambers. She fought with all she had the guards and servants her husband had set on her. Her size should have been a weapon. But it had been years since she had picked up a sword or used her fists. The heavy velvet skirts had tangled around her legs during the struggle and the slippers landed nothing but slight kicks on the knees and thighs of the guards.

And while found in her chambers was the bed canopied in silk, chairs upholstered in satins and pillows embroidered by the most delicate of threads and edged with Myrish lace, it was still a prison. Servants had boarded up the windows so she never knew whether it was day or night. Her lord husband humiliated her further by having her fed only stale bread and water once a day.

She was also bound at one of the pillars. She could only lean against it since the ropes were tight.

No one—not her father, misguided as he was in choosing the man that became her husband, nor her septa who had told her repeatedly she need only to look in a mirror to see the true lie of compliments bestowed on her—had treated her so appallingly. Her husband had never whipped her. Never had her stripped by his guards and used by them to remind her that she was a woman and nothing else. But he knew just how to humiliate her.

Men’s usual vices were drink, women and sword. Her husband always took pleasure in putting the Evenstar’s daughter in her proper place.

But if he thought her broken a long time ago, he was very much mistaken. Her early inclination to a martial life had prepared her for pain. Pain from cuts and slashes as she learned the sword, gouges from the morning star and the first, second and third times she broke her nose she remembered clearer than the frantic thrusts of his cock.

He always thought that the way to break her was to deprive her of things. It was why he had her witness the melting of her swords, shield and morning star while she still ached from her first time. Why he had her held by guards as her breeches, armor and boots were thrown in the fire.

And he thought that when she remained quiet and almost unmoving as he rutted in her cunt, she had surrendered and given him her body. A body that was his to do as he pleased since she was his wife. He had done many things to her body. Things she still sometimes felt even when he wasn’t inside her. Things the dark had saved her from. And it was one of those things that finally had his seed quicken in her womb.

When she was heavy with child and refused him in her bed, he paraded whores in front of her chambers. Sometimes summoned her late in the night and forced her to watch what he did to those women. He had wanted her jealous. Wished to provoke her. But she would just look at him with a blank expression until ordered to leave.

He had his head buried in the tits of a whore when told his lady wife’s birthing pains had begun. When he finally deigned to appear in her chambers to look at her baby boy, he still smelled of cheap perfume and rutting. In her anger, she had yelled for the guards to remove him. She refused her son to be dishonored. 

The next day, she was dragged from her chambers and flung in a tower. As her skin burned from the might of the sun entering the window, her lips cracked from absence of water and her breasts hurt and swelled from milk, she pleaded and called for whoever might hear that she needed to see her son.

Those two days were the longest of her life. And the most painful. It was the first fissure in her resolve. Keeping her from her child was always going to be a definite blow, her husband had discovered. And he thrived in putting this fear in her whenever she tried refusing him in bed, or when she once again forgot what it meant to be a woman.

Still, he never stopped trying to find out what else would break her. Humiliate her. Little did he realize that Brienne knew more of mockery and humiliation than love and respect. Shamed for her coarse features her whole life, mocked for choosing the sword over needle before marriage. Years of such torment had hardened her. She was helpless when it came to her son but in all she was unbroken.

Until several days ago. When she found out what her husband had done. What he’d agreed to.

She who refused to be baited by his parade of whores and the sick pleasure he drew from depriving her of weapons, breeches, had been unable to stop herself and struck him. It had been a long time since her fist had punched flesh and bone but the resounding crack of his nose was satisfying. It left her knuckles on fire. The pain was enough distraction for the guards and servants to fall on her.

And now. . .here she was. On the brink of madness not from the lack of food and water, sunlight and air, movement. But because of who she might never see again.

All the pain her body had endured since that day in the sept and she’d vowed loyalty to the lump of a man that was her husband was nothing to what was going to happen. She was gagged so she couldn’t even try using her teeth to loosen the bonds. When she had to eat and drink, a guard had to keep a knife at her throat.

Everything that could be a weapon had been removed from her chambers. Her food came wrapped in cloth and the goblet holding the water had to be tipped to her mouth.

Days since her imprisonment, the double doors were suddenly swept open. Brienne, head slumped forward from a nagging, splitting ache beginning from between her ears towards the top of her skull, stared as Humfrey Wagstaff lumbered in. Her lips quirked in a weak smile seeing the bandage on his nose.

He was two and seventy and looked much older. He had no need for a cane yet but walked slowly, and he was squinting at her through milky eyes. Soft when she first laid eyes on him, and softer now that he was lord of the isle, no one would pick him as a fighter. Not even the most desperate.

But because he knew that he’d done Lord Selwyn the huge favor of accepting a daughter so ugly and so unwomanly, he had somehow gained power and enough allies such that no one dared the softest whimper of protest in his treatment of his wife. Those who had were stripped of their titles and even lands. It was why her old maester was sent away. Why Ser Goodwin, the master-at-arms who taught her to fight, just disappeared. The same went with servants sympathetic to her. As a result, nearly if not all servants and guards in Evenfall Hall were loyal first and only to Humfrey.

Besides, Brienne had overheard two women whisper to each other one day while clearing her chambers of stained sheets, it wasn’t like he hit her. He was only being a man, a lord husband, reminding her now and then what a woman should be like. He was no more different from a peasant who owned his wife.

Brienne licked her cracked lips as he stood in front of her. He was not every tall and looked clownish in the blue and rose colors of her house. He let out a sigh looking at her.

“Get her up,” he told someone behind him. He sounded tired and impatient.

Immediately, two servants tried pulling Brienne up. Seeing her bonds were too tight, Humfrey sighed. “Guard, cut the ropes.”

A guard stuck a blade between her wrist and rope and slashed. As he worked on the bonds on her ankles, she removed her gag. The servants helped her up.

Brienne gasped from the sudden rush of blood to her legs. Seeing white for a moment, she felt herself fall if not for the quick hands of the servants seizing her. As she steadied herself, Humfrey looked at her with distaste.

“Are you proud of what you’ve done? Bring her to the looking glass.”

“What other truth is there that I do not yet know, my lord husband?” Her voice was as rough as parchment.

Still, she was pulled and put in front of the full-length looking glass. Her pale hair was limp and greasy from sweat and being deprived of a wash. She was pale too, rather than the usual blotchy skin. Her dress was creased in so many places she doubted it could be smooth again.

“What do you think will your lord father say if he can see you now?”

“Perhaps it is best you tell me. I have no skill in communing with the dead.”

“Why must you always make things so difficult?” He whined. “You don’t even inquire on my health after what you’ve done to me.”

“Milord appears to be as well as he can be, considering he’s been free to move about.” She rubbed the red welts on her wrists.

He watched her, looking pained and resigned. “Did you think striking me should go unpunished?”

“`Tis a woman’s instinct to strike,” she replied, turning away from the mirror. “And you have done your duty in teaching me not only my place but also my behavior.”

“Fishwives strike and shriek. You are my wife. The Evenstar’s daughter.”

Brienne bowed her head slightly. “Thank you for reminding me.”

Instead of replying, he turned and nodded to the servants. Brienne froze when they started undoing the laces of her bodice. Reddening, her head snapped to the door and saw a guard standing there. She looked at Humfrey. “Wait—”

Humfrey saw the guard and let out another sigh. “Fetch the gag.”

Brienne shook her head but still the cloth was returned around her mouth. Stripped down to a shift that left little to the imagination, Humfrey nodded at the guard and then the servants. The gag was removed from Brienne.

“Leave us. Close the door.”

She tried not to look murderous when his cold hands took hold of hers. They were cold like dead fish.

“I know you still mourn your father. He was a good man. It is only natural that you admire him. But this behavior of yours, Brienne. . .questioning me. . .striking me in front of everyone.” He looked baffled and betrayed. “Tongues are still wagging about our marriage. And now you’ve given the isle another reason for gossip. It gets tiring teaching you how to be a woman.”

Brienne waited until he let her go. She had known never to trust anything her husband said. He behaved like a spoiled, entitled child in an old man’s body but he can just as easily be cruel.

“A woman’s place is with her child.” She couldn’t stop the tremor in her voice.

Humfrey frowned. “You bear my children but you belong at my side.”

She had barely swallowed the instinct to strike when she realized what had happened. She had walked into a trap.

Air left her lungs when Humfrey’s hand fell on her thick waist. The other fondled her breast through the linen. She was taller but it did her little when his lips rubbed her collarbone.

“You are still young enough to bear many heirs,” he said while licking her and undoing the laces of her shift. “The maester says there are herbs he can put in a tea so you will bleed again.”

Whenever his hands and mouth stained her, she retreated far deep inside herself, looking to get lost. This time, she couldn’t distance herself. Instead of his touch being blunt presses on her skin, she shivered from the hot slobber of his mouth on her nipple. She stared hard at the painting of a garden on the wall but the looking glass was too big. Reminding her there was no getting away no matter what.

“Please.”

They stared at each other in shock. It was a word she had never spoken to him before. Nor had she spoken so brokenly.

“I-I—I implore on your mercy to let me see our son,” she whispered. “A woman is not fully realized until she is mother. You made sure I never forget that. It is what you told me on those nights. . .”

Whores, his cock, his constant humiliation of her—she would endure them repeatedly for as long as she saw her boy. The light of her world. The one reason she had stopped dreading every sunrise. Why she had never thrown herself from the highest parapet of Evenfall Hall and into the crushing waves.

“Indeed you are his mother,” Humfrey said, unmoved by her plea. “But what lord would allow his daughter to be betrothed to him with you as a mother? Do you not feel shame for what you’ve done to me? If six years had still not taught you—”

“You will teach me. You will continue teaching me,” she said, scraping what she could from within to say the very words that made her sick to the soul. “My husband. Do not deprive me of my son.”

“He is my son, not yours. You only bore him. It was my seed that made him. That honor I gave you seemed the farthest from your mind because you struck me.”

“I was—I was upset.” Brienne clutched at her heart. “You are sending him to squire at Ashemark.”

“Be grateful for the terms. Queen Cersei had House Tyrell decimated and they are a far greater House than Tarth. She had every right to call for our heads for siding with Renly Baratheon.”

A fist to his broken nose was too good. He didn’t deserve another moment with his head attached to his neck. _Be grateful for the terms._ She would rather lose the godsdamned isle than her son be a ward of House Marbrand.

A ward, indeed. She knew little of leadership and games that lords play. But she knew exactly what it meant. Squiring was barely a convincing disguise for the truth: her son was going to be a hostage to ensure the rest of the Stormlands never took up arms against Cersei and Jaime Lannister again.

Her son. Her young, innocent boy flung in a game of death. Brienne had no need for steel or any blade to hurt her husband. But if she failed. . .

There was nothing she _wouldn’t_ do. Walk through fire. Let the skin of her back be flayed. Whippings. Anything and everything.

Looking at Humfrey, Brienne fell to her knees. His green eyes widened.

“Please,” she repeated, clinging to his boots. “You must let me see Lyonel. I shall do all that you ask for as long as I get to hold and see my son before he departs. I. . .I-I beg you.”

She then hugged him around the knees, shaking so much. Shaking from the first of the many ordeals she knew lay ahead just to see her son, and many more once he was far away. Renly—her sweet Renly who told her no man deserved her tears. Advice she had taken to heart until she held her baby for the first time.

Of all that she had endured, the absence of her son would be the one to shatter her.

“ _All_ that I ask?”

She looked up. “All that you wish, my lord husband.”

A fat finger stroked the hard line of her cheek. “I admit to never having expected this of you.”

“W-what? What do you speak of?”

“This. Seeing this love from you. Being as it is the first time I see it I clearly have never been on the receiving end of it.” He looked disappointed.

Brienne said nothing as he continued touching her face. “It is quite the touching sight,” he murmured. “And there is something really becoming of a woman on her knees.”

An icy dread spread in Brienne as she understood what he meant. Despite the winter taking hold of her heart, her veins, a tear slid down the corner of her eye. Humfrey caught it in his thumb and licked it.

“And tears too. You look like a woman for the first time, Brienne.”

“I implore on your kindness. I ask as your wife, as a mother.”

“I need to see first how you will earn my favor as a woman, Brienne.”

Another tear fell down her cheek. She released her hold on his leg but he stopped her. “Show me, my lady wife. I confess to feeling a kind of eagerness I’ve never had for you before. I thought ‘tis only for whores.”

Her throat was tight. As if a noose was around it. As she stared silently, Humfrey smiled slowly. It did not reach his pale eyes.

“I—I could benefit if you will show me instead,” she managed to say.

In response, he brought her hand to the laces of his breeches.


	2. Jaime I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We will not have the seven kingdoms behind us if you contribute to the growing cracks.”  
> “We? I am the queen, Jaime. It’s my seven kingdoms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting two chapters to stop myself from tinkering some more. Thank you to catherineflowers again for basically talking me down from the tree during what could only be meltdowns (uh-huh, meltdowns!) in writing this. There is no better collaborator and of course, no better bestie!
> 
> Also, she's gorgeous! :-)

As the small council scrambled to arrange themselves, Jaime stared wordlessly at the queen. She stood by the head of the table, her emerald eyes sharp as swords as Gyles Rosby huffed and coughed dragging a heavy chair upholstered in crimson and gold. His sweat were threads and beads of tinged white rather than clear. They gleamed like pearls in the sun rather than the gold his position in the small council charged him to gather and guard.

He glanced at Ser Gregor Clegane, hidden as always from head to toe in black steel. Only a slit across the plate helm did someone see his eyes. Or thought to see them since the light seemed to never fall right on him and allow a glimpse of those orbs.

After making sure that the chair was properly placed, Gyles gave an awkward, shaky bow to Cersei. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, barely acknowledging him. Then she gathered her heavy silk skirts and sat gracefully. She shot Jaime a cold, cutting look before glancing at the others. Only then did everyone sit down.

“Continue.” Her voice was just above a whisper but rang clear as a bell in the chambers of the Hand of the Queen.

“Your Grace,” Qyburn said politely. “If I may, and surely this is what is in everyone’s minds, we are grateful you have chosen to grace us with your presence.”

Cersei smiled. “Of course.”

“To continue, there are factions in the north led by houses still loyal to House Stark that intend to overthrow House Bolton. Lord Bolton has requested that we send a small army to contain the resistance.”

“When my father Lord Tywin granted that skin-flaying madman Winterfell, it was made clear it is his to do with as he likes. Did my father make a mistake granting the largest region of Westeros to a man who is powerless against. . .peasants. With rusted axes?” Her eyes glittered and her ruby lips teased an amused smile. Everyone, except Jaime, allowed themselves smiles and chuckles.

“Lord Bolton claims the people have been burning stables and taking livestock.”

Cersei smirked. “Lord Bolton who put a knife through the young wolf’s throat has admitted defeat against. . .what? Horse burners? Pig and sheep thieves?”

“Bolton has always been merciless but his bastard is another thing,” Jaime spoke up. “Word has it he has been rounding up the children of Houses that still refuse to bow to them.” He stared hard at Cersei when he spoke the next words: “He flays them. The people have called for him to take action and he has refused---”

“Roose Bolton fails the crown in his failure to control these pockets of resistance. Inform him, Maester Qyburn, that if he has not brought peace in the north by the next moon he will be stripped of all favors Lord Tywin had given him. And I’ll have his bastard strip the skin off his bones.”

“Is. . .Will that be it, your grace?”

“Must there be more? Send him a raven. It’s what he deserves rather than our swiftest rider. He should think twice before bothering the crown with issues that are domestic at best.” She looked at Jaime again, her ruby lips curling in slight sneer when he tried speaking again. Then she turned her attention to Lord Gyles Rosby. 

“What of our gold?”

Clearing his throat, he sputtered, “The treasury is just enough to cover us for a winter that lasts for twelve moons—” he paused to take a swift drink from the goblet. Jaime tried to not wince as he coughed once again. “My apologies. It’s the weather, your grace. As I was saying—”

“Only twelve moons? What of the gold the Tyrells have surrendered so selflessly?” Cersei asked mockingly. “Carts of it were presented before me. There was enough to last more than twelve moons.”

“Yes. Yes. Gold and land. But the lands of Highgarden had already yielded wheat and fruit now in our stores. The gold—” He coughed again.

“Yes. The gold,” Cersei snapped. “What of it?”

“It was used to pay our debts to the Iron Bank.”

“All of it?”

“What is left is for the remaining twelve moons.”

This was the first Jaime had heard of it. Momentarily forgetting what he needed to say, he sent Gyles a look of disbelief. Gold for just twelve moons? What if winter lasted longer?

“Why did we have to settle all debts in a single payment? Why was this matter not raised to me?”

“Forgive me, your grace. But it was an arrangement made by your father before his. . .his untimely death. The Iron Bank has warned that our failure to meet the deadline would have them collecting what we owe through fire and blood.”

Silence met his words. Gold for just twelve moons, Jaime thought. _And now dragons_.

Cersei scoffed, “Fire and blood? They mean to support who? That Targaryen bitch?”

“This is why I called for a small council,” Jaime’s words drew her eyes to him again. There was no love in her gaze. Rather than shrinking from its absence, it seemed to buoy him. “She has taken Meereen. As we speak, she is gathering armies of Unsullied, Dothraki and sellswords.”

She regarded him then, head tilted to the side. Her eyes scanned every inch of his face, it seemed, every line and every twitch. Then, “Leave us.”

The rest of the council looked at each other then Qyburn, seated at the other head of the table. He nodded and stood up. Bowing, he murmured, “Your grace.”

The others followed suit, bowing and muttering before they shuffled out. Cersei nodded at Gregor. Jaime watched him leave, his armor squeaking from the weight and strain of bearing his heavy form. The door closed, leaving them alone. They stared at each from across the table.

His mirror in every way, Cersei was golden from the waves of her hair down the tips of her shoes. The gown she wore was the same blood-crimson as Jaime’s coat. But where his emerald gaze was wary, hers was brilliant like shards of ice.

“You seem to have plenty to say without your queen having to ask you,” she observed. “What has changed?”

“I am still your twin brother and Master of Laws. Who just happens to be your husband now.”

“Does that make you king?” When he didn’t speak, Cersei smirked again and relaxed in the chair. “Of course that’s what you think.”

“Do not presume to know all that I think.”

“Do you speak to me as your queen or your wife? I believe there is much for you to learn. However you must be reminded that though I share your bed, I am Queen. No one speaks unless I say so. And if I want no one breathes until I allow it.”

“You do not lead by threats or being a tyrant. I would think the discussion of the northern situation is still fresh.”

“The north’s only currency is ice and desolation.”

“Then you are not queen of the Seven Kingdoms. It is not too late, Cersei.”

“What is?”

Jaime hesitated. “Perhaps a threat for Roose to be stripped of his position will have him do the work. In that you are right. But the north is vast and none of the Houses support him. There is much a small army of our soldiers can do. To keep the north. For you to have all your seven kingdoms.”

When she continued to look unconvinced, he pressed, “By failing to hold the north, Roose fails you. His queen. You are also right. But as queen it is your duty—”

“What’s this?” Cersei’s laugh was disbelieving. “Are you telling me, the queen, of my duties?”

“I think you need reminding,” he said after a moment.

“I thought you were going to tell me next that I should return the north to the Starks. Wherever those headless wolves have gone.”

Jaime swallowed, remembering too well the circumstances that brought him back to King’s Landing. Back to Cersei’s arms. “I swore a vow to Catelyn Stark to return her daughters alive in Winterfell.”

“Vows you made to a dead woman. Besides those girls are long dead already. Arya lost before Ned lost his head. Sansa for all we know a corpse that has given meat to dozens of bowls of brown. What good are their bones, should we find one?”

Cersei suddenly stood up. She strode to the desk of the Hand. Once it had been filled with documents, seals of the lion that was of House Lannister when Tywin served the office. Now there were bottles of odd colors Jaime didn’t recognize, as well as a pervading stench of something sharp that made him crave meat.

Cersei found a bottle of wine and sniffed it. As she poured herself a glass, she remarked, “Qyburn does know fine spirits too. I quite like that.”

“The sun has practically just risen.”

“Yet my small council is already hard at work. Without me.”

“The matter of Daenaerys Targaryen needed urgent discussion.”

“If you want me worried about my throne being in danger from men without cocks and a little girl who believes herself to be still queen after all this time, you thought wrong. My armies are battle-hardened. My men _crave_ war. Daenerys will never set foot in King’s Landing, let alone sit on the Iron Throne.”

“Wars are won not from the sheer number of men who crave war, Cersei. Trained soldiers. How can you keep them trained and their weapons new and sharpened with gold just for twelve moons? What of their food? You are queen of the seven kingdoms only in name, I hate to remind you. Your kingdoms are divided, beginning north. And now this. . .this law you have demanded about holding hostage the children of families that did not fight on our side. . .”

“I wanted those families stripped of their castles, down to the very thread that holds their clothes. I wanted them whipped and paraded on the streets so people will not forget. You misliked it.”

“Can you guarantee these children you are sending straight into what I can only imagine is a storm of swords will be safe? That they will not be hurt? This war has broken Westeros, Cersei, and people are looking for someone to pay. What’s to stop these men from taking it out on the children?”

“You speak of other people’s children except ours,” she whispered. “The ones we lost.”

“They are long dead.” Joffrey had been a beast with a crown. Cersei had loved the first of their children but blood did not blind Jaime to his cruelty. But Tommen. Sweet little Tommen with his fat pink cheeks and liking to cuddle his cats rather than sword. And Myrcella. Cersei in every way except for her heart and mind.

“I grieve for them,” he told her. “But it doesn’t mean snatching children from their mothers and putting them in the hands of men who have not forgiven the mistakes their parents made. Your reign, need not be rooted in terror. It should not be about vengeance.”

“Not about vengeance? Father had Robb Stark and all the northern lords slain to get you back and you are just one. These betrayers of the crown that for some inexplicable reason you defend—we lost our father and children because of them. And everyone else who refused to take up arms.”

“We will not have the seven kingdoms behind us if you contribute to the growing cracks.”

“We? I am the queen, Jaime. It’s _my_ seven kingdoms.”

Jaime grimaced as Cersei swallowed the wine then picked up the bottle again to refill. Her golden hair swung and her silks made rustling, whispered sounds similar to bodies tussling in bed from the sharpness of her motions. He saw she had filled the goblet almost to the top. Slamming the bottle down, she picked up the goblet again. 

“I’ve lost so much in order to gain at last what I’ve long deserved. I endured Robert’s whores, how father kept dismissing me merely because of what I lack between the legs. Even that monstrous dwarf you regard as our brother—”

“Tyrion is our brother.”

“Tyrion who should have laid his life for Joffrey instead of letting him be murdered in the riots! Murderers he set on him!”

“I will never believe that.”

“Hardly surprising since you don’t believe he murdered our mother either.”

Jaime was aghast. “That was not his fault. He was a baby. You honestly can not still blame him for that?”

Cersei took another swig of the wine, longer this time. He wondered how her throat could not burn from it.

“Enough has been taken from me,” she hissed to no one in particular. She turned her head to him. “This dragon bitch. Do you really believe she will bring war upon us?”

When Jaime did not answer, she continued, “You are right. This war she intends to bring to our doorstep requires gold. A lot of it. We need armies. Men. Weapons that must be kept sharp.” She smiled, sipping again. “Weapons to take down her dragons.”

“We need to make a show of strength,” Jaime said as Cersei walked back to the long table, goblet in hand. He sighed. The wine had painted a lovely flush on her smooth cheeks but there was a slight slur in her speech. Of late she was hardly without wine in her hand. Maybe it was only now he was seeing it. She was clearly not new into the habit, he thought, watching her drink. She took it like water in an arid desert.

“With that, we can force her into making a truce. Prevent a war.”

“A truce? My dear brother.” She sat on the edge of the long table, her skirts draping his arm. “It should be becoming, this innocence of yours. After everything.” Slim, ivory fingers stroked his golden waves. There had been a time her gentle caress made him stir. “Do you think that bitch will agree to a truce with us?” She asked, leaning in as if to kiss him. She smelled of wine and cloves. “You who murdered her father? Death at least protects father from her wrath. I assume she has a memory as long as the Martells. There is no forgiving the slaughter of her niece and baby nephew.”

Aerys, Jaime thought while Cersei took another pull of the wine. It all began with Aerys. Sometimes he wondered if the war had really ended when he buried a sword in the Mad King’s back. There were years of peace when the nights were silver and the days even more golden. But these periods of respite were swift when compared to the wars that just kept spawning.

“But you are right. It doesn’t hurt to prepare. Gold. Where do you suggest we get that? Should we start melting our goblets for coins?” She pulled her hand back and leaned away from him.

“We have regained our good credit with the Iron Bank. But not just for armies, Cersei. The people are starving. Ice is taking over fields. Trees that should yield sweet fruits have withered. We don’t need another riot.”

She chuckled. “You speak as if you were there.” Then she sneered, “As if you know what it had been like.”

He wished, for her sake, to grieve the son they had lost. But he had no love for Joffrey.

“It’s the people starving that keep getting what gold we have. That gold is ours.”

Jaime frowned. “Ours to use and protect the people with.”

“People?” Cersei spat the sword. “What people? Do you mean those stinking farmers that keep coming to King’s Landing at all hours complaining of dead fields and dying cows? Coming here expecting me to what—feed them?” She put the goblet down and got to her feet. 

“They come here because the wealth is here. All the food they farm is here.”

“Farmed on _my_ lands. Wealth _I_ gained by losing our father and our sons. Do you know what they say? They say House Lannister won the war but did we?”

“Everyone has lost somebody,” he said softly.

“Not as much as I have. I dread every sunrise. I dread every knock on our chambers late in the night. Thinking that this is it. This is the day we’re sent Myrcella’s head.” Cersei strode to the window and Jaime knew it was to hide her tears from him. He couldn’t understand why she was ashamed of them now, when she never hesitated to fall in his arms before, her eyes red from crying.

“How dare you speak to me of people and their empty stomachs. About using gold to feed them,” she hissed but without looking at him. She continued to stare at the city below. “They hid and whimpered in their little thatch houses rather than fighting for me. For our children. And you wish them to be fed? What next, clothe them in silks?”

“You can not blame them for what has happened to our children. As for Myrcella. . .she is betrothed to Doran’s son. She will not be harmed.”

“I don’t know if it’s your innocence or stupidity that astounds me.” She snapped when he moved to join her. “Tyrion—that monster—he bartered our daughter for the Martell army that never came. Do you not see how father would still be alive if they had? Tommen?”

“You mean to say they had a chance to live had Doran sent his men, if the common folk wielded swords rather than pitchforks they would survive?”

“Better their bodies melted in armor than them,” she said, turning to look at him. Tears stained her cheeks.

He should hold her. Kiss away her anger and grief. But from the very lips that had soothed his pride from repeated whispers of Kingslayer was one mad word after the next. This was not the sister he knew. How was she the person he loved all his life?

She went from pouring out the grief of a mother, the anger of a daughter abandoned, to a complete stranger ranting about the common folk. That somehow it was in their hands to save the men she had loved the most. How could she think Tywin and Joffrey’s deaths were debts she would call upon them?

Uncertain as he was, he reached out to take her in his arms. Just like before, she fell on his chest. She was still soft and smelled of lavender. His Queen. He stroked her hair, her tears wetting his coat. There was nothing he would not do for her, he thought, looking at the city below. Thinking of that Stark boy. How his little heart had stuttered against his hand before pushing him from the window of that decrepit tower.

 _For Cersei. For their children._ Children they still lost. He looked at the golden sun in the horizon, thinking of Myrcella. 

“Make them leave,” she whispered against his neck. “Jaime, promise me.”

“Who?” He set her away from him, thumbs rubbing away her tears. She gasped and turned away from his touch. As if disgusted. She shrank form his embrace before leaving the circle of his arms. He watched the skirts swirl about her as she retrieved the goblet from the table.

A sip. A swallow. A faraway look. Looking as if she was dreaming. But he knew better.

“The gold we have and what gold we will gather will go to the protection of King’s Landing. It will not go beyond our walls.”

“What are you saying?”

She looked at him. “You swore to me that with our marriage a golden dynasty will rise from the kingdom of ashes left to us. Do you still intend to fulfill that? I ask because godly vows clearly mean nothing to you. You have murdered a king.”

“So have you. And I never make vows lightly.” He was angered and hurt that she had flung his finest act to his face as if it was a crime. But there were secrets he still believed in keeping. Even from Cersei.

He no longer wore the white cloak but a part of him, broken and little, still believed in vows. His thoughts turned to two girls, their faces blurred except for the blue and gray of their clothes.

“Good.” She smiled.

“What do you ask of me? Do you ask me as your husband or master of laws?”

“I ask you as the man I hope you would be, Jaime. This common folk that you say are starving because winter had taken lands they should be farming and cultivating and are now here expecting to be fed. These. . .people. . .that you defend as if their absence mattered not in keeping the lives of our father and sons. Are they not breaking laws? Rejecting lands House Lannister won for them? Spitting at me, the queen? To strike me is punishable by death. What do they deserve for rejecting my sacrifices so they may keep lands they can’t be bothered to plant on?”

Her smile hardened as a light colder than winter gleamed in her eyes. “Ensure not a trace of them will be found. Not in my streets. Not outside my walls. That is my wish. And as my brother and husband who has cloaked and taken me in your protection, I expect this duty I bestow on you the swiftest of executions.”


	3. Brienne II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t want to go anywhere that doesn’t have an ocean around it, mother. Or where everything is brown and green. I like blue,” he insisted. “Like your eyes, mother. They’re blue like the sea. I hate green.”   
> Brienne couldn’t help but chuckle. “But they are the color of your eyes.”  
> “You have pretty eyes. Father doesn’t.”
> 
> ******  
> Trigger warning for flashbacks of abuse. Read at your own risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing a Netflix and dropping all three in a week! 
> 
> Now that more or less that pieces I've kept and rearranged are in their proper places, the story, hopefully, should write itself. I owe a huge, huge debt to catherineflowers for more handholding when it came to writing Lyonel. I think she knows everything in the world!

The water was a balm to her sore mouth. She gargled it to cleanse the bitter aftertaste of yet another difficult, long night. She spat in the bowl a servant held for her. When the young woman began to move, she was stopped by a large pale hand, the sleeves falling to reveal thick red welts.

The servant girl looked at them.

“Dyrna,” Brienne gave her a gentle pull. “Please. I need another.”

“I’m sorry, milady,” Dyrna said, quickly holding out the bowl. Brienne held out the glass and another servant poured water into it. She gargled again then spat.

“Thank you.”

She stood up, wincing from the cramp flaring from her cunt and hips. In the next breath it was gone, although the soreness continued to spread now that she was standing. Around her, servants helped undo the laces of her shift, poured water in the tub and arranged for a tray of soaps within her reach.

She bent her knees and it was as the shift was pulled over her head by servants already standing on tiptoe that she gritted her teeth form pain. The linen was rough on nipples that felt stripped of skin. Half-squatting for her clothes to be removed had her spine tightening in large knots of protest and what seemed like claws digging in the meat of her hips of under the skin. And then it was off her head. She schooled her expression to one of calm while straightening up.

“Thank you. That’s all,” she dismissed them. They hurried with their curtsies then scrambled out of the room, tripping on their skirts and each other, the wares they held. All had their heads bowed.

But she knew they had seen her red nipples and the dark bruises of Humfrey’s mouth all over her neck and stomach. She walked towards the tub, where a small basin and another jar of water waited for her. Standing in the basin, she picked up the jar and tipped water to her hand. She splashed it to her cunt, furiously rubbing the sticky clump of hairs, the dried seed between her thighs. She grabbed soap, took a deep breath then scrubbed herself all the way inside. And out. The burn drew her eyes shut and a shaky sob from her lips.

She gripped the edges of the tub as she climbed in, falling hard in the water. She waited for the whiplash of pain to recede before turning to sit with her back against the edge. She closed her eyes as the warm water soothed her breasts and cunt. It felt almost like kisses. Kisses that should only belong in a dream.

Humfrey always used her hard. Despite a body bursting from fat and a face often coated in sweat and oil, he had a cock that was quick to harden that lasted for about a thrust and a half, sometimes two. His whores proclaimed him the best of lovers, as they should. Gold never failed to inspire flatteries.

But because of his build and the darkness of his chambers, more often than not his cock did not exactly go where it must. Too often it was the slit formed between her fused thighs while lying on her side that he mistook for her cunt. Or when she was on hands and knees, his hands pushed at the flesh of her ass rather than delving a bit lower. He didn’t like having her on top because it meant his seed would pour out of her rather than stay inside.

He preferred her mouth to her cunt and would trap her face between his fat hands. Despite the advice of the maester and even his whores, he truly believed since a woman’s mouth was another orifice for his cock, seed pushed into it would go where it must and grow into a child.

Long as any night with him was, Brienne found small mercy in his inability to sleep sharing a bed. After bruising her mouth with his hand to muffle her grunts while fucking her, he had finally collapsed and gasped for her to go.

Brienne refused to see her son bearing any stain of an intimate encounter with her husband. She didn’t do it for him but for herself, wanting time with him to be solely theirs.

Usually she took time with her bath. Humfrey had a way of staying far inside her no matter how much she retreated, and last night she had felt him more acutely than before. The dark had hidden the sheen of her tears. He had taken her quiet sobs for moans. So she scrubbed soap harshly on her body until her skin was stinging and red.

Clearly standing behind the door with their ears pressed to it, a soft knock came once she set foot back on the floor and dripped water all over it. “Lady Brienne?”

“Yes,” she said, wrapping herself in a robe. “You may come in.”

As the bath was cleared and a dress laid out for her, Brienne looked out the window. Gone were the boards, allowing her to see the endless horizon of blue that seemed to meet the sapphire waters of Tarth. Her fingers gripped the wooden lattices of the frame as she took in the stretch of sand so white it seemed a carpet of silk waiting to be treaded by a queen.

Brienne turned away from the window. The handmaidens circled her again. One held the dress, the next her undergarments and hose, the last her shoes. She stepped in her small clothes and nimble fingers quickly tied the silly silk ribbons on the sides to secure them. Next her hose was rolled and pulled up her long legs. They silk and sheer, delicate. Then her shift, requiring her again to bend for the loose garment be put on her. With the linen veiling her face as hands carefully tugged it down, she scowled.

She abhorred the practice of having these waiting on her hand foot and helping her dress in these ridiculous clothes that hindered movements she missed. Back when she wore mainly shirts and breeches, there had been no need for them. She did not even wear small clothes since they rode up her crack whenever practicing proper footwork with the sword.

A rage simmered within her too whenever they snuck sympathetic looks at her breasts, straight waist and cunt. More than once she had overheard them clucking their tongues behind walls or pillars about the smallness of her breasts, and how the size of her nipples strained the mouth of her baby for being large. They no longer questioned if she was a woman. Now the chatter was even though she’d had a child, she clearly still did not have the shape of one.

The dress she had chosen was unadorned with ridiculous laces and ribbons. It was plain if not for the shape that gave her the illusion of a waist, and the laces in front pushed her breasts together to suggest some fullness. She watched as one of the girls bent to put the shoes on her.

“Sorelle,” she said, making the girl crane her neck to look at her. “Please, I’d like the brown boots.”

“But milady, those are very plain.”

“There are no dances,” she began only to stop as she remembered one from many years ago. Minstrels had played music that made her heart stutter and however brief a time that night, she had thought herself as beautiful as those princesses in songs rescued by brave knights. “No dances,” she repeated, “nor is it even supper time to be in such. . fancy shoes.” She failed hiding her grimace at the huge bows adorning the shoes.

“At once, milady,” Sorelle said. “I apologize.”

As her brown boots were retrieved, Dyrna came to help put a necklace around her neck. Brienne pressed the pendant of the Evenstar just above her breasts. It came in a simple silver chain but the jewel was encrusted with diamonds and at the center, a sapphire.

“Where does milady wish to break her fast?” Dyrna asked.

“The garden,” Brienne answered. “I intend to share it with my son. Do we have his favorites?”

“Yes, milady.”

“That’s good.” Brienne glanced at the window again then back to the girl. “Please don’t take too long. And what of my. . .my lord husband?”

The girls looked at each other. “He-He is still abed, milady.”

“Do not rouse him just yet, then. But make sure his ham steaks, hot bread, butter and three duck’s eggs are ready when he wakes. He must have a sip of his dark beer first before his meal. The ham steaks have to be thick.”

Having done her proper, wifely duty, she left the room. She didn’t even glance in the direction of the Sun Wing, where Humfrey’s chambers were. She climbed down the wide wooden staircase.

She walked the hallway on which the grim faces of her ancestor peered at her from canvasses. She stopped in front of the portraits of her father and mother. The likeness of Selwyn Tarth looking at her now was far from the man she remembered. His eyes were bluer rather than the color of a summer sky. And his hair with a hint of gold rather than wheat. Her mother she was sad not to remember at all. She had been sitting for her portrait just before she was supposed to give birth. It explained the roundness of her stomach. Her eyes—Brienne could never decide. Sometimes they looked blue, sometimes, violet. It depended on how the light hit them. Her hair was white despite her youthful face and worn in a thick braid draped over her shoulder. Brienne wore the necklace she had in the portrait.

The last portrait was different. The boy was not sitting nor was he looking at the viewer with an unsmiling face. He was running in the sand, wheat hair whipping around his face, pink lips open in a laugh Brienne thought she could still hear. Her dear Galladon, she thought, reaching out to touch his face. He had died too soon and tragically.

As Brienne walked away, she thought of how different her life would be had he lived. He would be lord of the Sapphire Isle.

There was no point on dwelling in a past when the ink was dry but she sometimes still wondered how different things would be. If she had married her first betrothed as soon as she had flowered. If she had been more alert during the fight with Humfrey. If she had lingered just for several breaths longer in the arms of another rather than rushing to hide her betrayal. The dishonor she had willfully chosen. If her father had survived the Battle of Blackwater rather than Humfrey.

These memories were arrows to her heart, despite the distance of years. She hurt for what might have been. But if not for them, there would be no Lyonel.

She stopped just outside the library, listening to the maester instructing her son. “Again, milord. How did the War of the Five Kings begin?”

“After the death of King Robert, his Hand, Ned Stark, challenged the claim of his son, King Joffrey for the throne. His. . .his treasonous act resulted in his beheading. The Houses of the North rose in arms and this is how the war began.”

“Indeed, milord. Well done.”

“Why would Ned Stark try to take away from throne from King Joffrey, Maester Whylis?” Lyonel asked. “When kings have sons they are princes. He was the prince.”

Brienne thought to appear at the doorway just then. Maester Wylis cleared his throat and pushed his spectacles high on his nose. Scrambling to his feet, he bent shakily with his arthritic knees. “Lady Brienne.”

Lyonel turned. The smile on his face was as warm as the sun breaking out in the horizon to start a new day. “Mother!”

Brienne laughed as he ran to her, throwing his arms around her waist. As they hugged, Maester Wylis sighed wearily. “Milady, I apologize. I have taught him better manners when greeting you.”

“It is just us, and he will remember next time.” Brienne said, hugging him tightly. Stroking his soft, golden hair so he would look up at her, she asked, “Have you been doing the work, young man?”

Lyonel started to answer but Maester Wylis was faster. “He still has trouble with writing, milady. And he stumbles on some words.”

As he spoke, he shot her an accusing look. As if the child’s shortcomings were her fault. Brienne looked at him with a blank expression. “Surely with practice he will get better. Not everyone excels immediately.”

“If you believe so.”

Lyonel’s hold on her waist tensed. Brienne knew she had to tread carefully. The maester had her husband’s ear and if word got to him of his wife seemingly questioning him, she was going to be locked in her chambers again.

Keeping her gaze calm and her tone soft, she looked at the stooped old man before her. In another life she could have taken him. Sliced a dagger through the white beard hanging down his chest. Painted his gray eyes purple with her fists. She wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of a sword.

“My husband has faith in your abilities, so I have no reason to question it,” she said. “Learning can be as challenging as teaching. The great maesters did not earn their chains overnight but over time, mastering one skill to proceed to the next, more challenging one. You must remember the work and sacrifice it took to earn all your chains. There is little pride to be found in work one does easily. The willingness for hard work is what puts men’s names in histories, do you not agree?”

Somewhat mollified by her words, the maester blinked at her and nodded. “Indeed, milady.”

“I have no doubt Lord Lyonel has the patience for hard work,” she continued. “It is a virtue I hope you imbue your lessons more of. And you will succeed.”

He gave her another shaky bow. “Milady.”

“Good.” She acknowledged with a quick incline of her head. Realizing he was being dismissed, he sighed and gathered the books and scrolls. Brienne and Lyonel watched as he shuffled away, his chains rattling. They waited until silence fell following his footfalls. Only then did mother and son turn to each other and laughed, albeit quietly.

“Mother.” Lyonel pressed his face to her stomach again, his hold fierce.

“It must be my nameday today to be getting so much hugs,” she mused, combing her fingers through his hair. She dropped a quick kiss on his forehead. “But it’s not. What’s this, Lyonel?”

“Father said you were ill,” he mumbled. “He said I was to not see you but must keep praying for you to be a good woman.”

Brienne was glad his face remained burrowed on her, like a cub seeking warmth. Her jaw set tightly from another surge of anger. She willed herself to calm, closing her eyes and concentrating on the warmth of his little body, his long arms. Finally, she set him away from her so she may crouch down and look him in the eye.

“Mother.” Green eyes searched her face. “Are you ill?”

She shook her head. “No, my love. I promise I am not.”

He still looked unconvinced so she took his hand. “Come. Let’s break our fast together. I thought the garden would be lovely.”

They walked down the hallway again, towards the archways leading to the gardens of Evenfall Hall. But before they could step out into the sun, Lyonel tugged at her hand again.

“What is it, Lyonel?”

“Father keeps telling me to pray for you. Because you are not a good woman.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t believe him.”

Brienne looked out into the sea, the garden, and back, again willing for calm. The water glimmered like a field of sapphire under the sun. The garden, a deep, vivid green despite the golden blast, was abundant with tall trees from which hung the sweetest fruits like lemons, peaches, and thick carpets of leaves and flowers on the ground. The air smelled of the sea, salty and fresh, touched ever delicately by notes of citrus and perhaps even honey.

This time, she got down on one knee before Lyonel.

Though she had loved him even before he was born, she was still filled with infinite gladness there was nothing of Humfrey in him. Not in the waves of his hair that shone like gold especially in the sun, or the brilliance of his eyes rather than the dullness of her husband’s gaze that bordered on gray. He was quick to redden in the sun, and his face and neck splashed with freckles. He had a round, pleasant face. He would not grow to be the most handsome man in Westeros. He had the look of kindness in him, and she was pleased it went to his heart as well.

“Your father. . .” she tried to say, trying to find words that were not a lie but not truthful as well. She didn’t do it to protect Humfrey but Lyonel. She took one of his hands, cradling it between hers before dropping a kiss on it.

“Your father has some beliefs, that’s true. But because he is your father, you will have to learn to respect them even when you don’t agree.”

He nodded. “Yes, mother.”

“You are a smart boy and I know this is a conversation that needs not to be repeated. It will take time to learn. And. . .And when you’re older, you will have your own beliefs too. And you will find that there are people who will not agree.”

“Such as when the master-at-arms says a true knight should only fight from a horse and with his sword, not on the ground with fists?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“Fists are easier.” Lyonel looked at their joined hands. “But were you ill, mother?”

“I’m so much better now,” she assured him. “Do you know why?”

He shook his head slowly. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Because now I can see you.”

He smiled and she held his hand to her heart. “Mother, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you.”

“Lyonel—”

“I saw where Ashemark is. It’s in the Westerlands, mother! It’s on the other side of the map.” Lyonel’s chin wobbled although it was clear he was trying not to cry. Brienne cradled his cheek in her big hand. “I asked the maester before we did histories today. He says it is a moon and a few days more even on a swiftest horse. A ship is two weeks but it’s hilly so there will be land travel still.”

And then he threw his arms around her again. She sighed and picked him up. All the pain in her body vanished when he was near.

Though he was long and lanky and still five moons away from turning seven years, he was still very much her little boy. She hugged him, pressing her nose on the warm, fragrant crook between neck and shoulder. Here was still the hint of his soft, baby smell. A sweet fragrance under all the sun and sweat on his body.

“Mother, please. Don’t make me go. I don’t want to go,” he pleaded, clinging.

“But don’t you want to be a knight, my love?” She asked, pulling away a little to look at him. There were tears on his freckled cheeks now. Brushing them away, she whispered, “How will you go on an adventure like the knights I tell you in my stories?”

Lyonel didn’t answer. Instead he hugged her again.

Trying to cheer him up, she began to sway. “Don’t you wish to ride in a ship, to go far out into the sea? To look for buried treasure, or what if you see dragons?” Feeling him smile against her neck, she continued, “What if the dragons from my stories are still out there and one of them allows you to ride? Think about touching the sky. Gathering clouds. Maybe even stars.”

Then she put him down, but only to tuck her hands under his arms before picking him up to swing him in circles upon circles. His laugh was a joyous, golden sound. Warm and full of life and light. He spread his arms as if to take flight. Two more twirls then she set him down, their faces flushed and their laughter breathless.

Hand in hand, they went to the table where servants had finished setting up the meal. She put him on a chair, using the cloth napkin to dry his tears. Then she took her seat and tried to encourage him to eat. “I thought to have your favorite breakfast today. Fried sardines in pepper oil with crusty bread. And peachcakes for dessert.”

She checked the pot and poured the beverage in a cup. “You also have your favorite honeyed milk.”

Despite his joy over the twirl, he stared at the food sadly.

“Look at me,” Brienne told him. He obeyed. “Boys like yourself who would become lords of their castles when they are older learn how to lead by serving other people first. That is what you will do as a page for Ser Addam Marbrand.”

Lyonel continued to just look at his food.

“Have I told you about Ser Brynden Tully?”

“The Blackfish?”

Brienne bade him to drink the milk. “Now that is a lord and knight to look up to. Brave and loyal. He made a name for himself in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. War is not the only way for one to be a distinguished knight, Lyonel. What makes a knight admirable is his. . .his sense of honor.” She held his hand. “It is more difficult than you can imagine. It entails so much sacrifice. Often the first step in that sacrifice is a journey.

“I just wish Ashemark is not so far away.”

“It’s not an adventure if it’s close to home.” She told him, pleased when he started eating. “Remember the story of Dunk and Egg?”

His eyes shone like jewels. “That’s my favorite story.”

“Mine too.”

Lyonel put the fried sardines in the bread and he mopped up the oil with it before taking a bite. As Brienne helped herself to melon and hard-cooked eggs, Lyonel asked, “Mother, have you gone on an adventure?”

She started, almost spilling the food on her skirt. “Me? Do you think I have?”

“It’s because you know all these stories. And you speak of knights as if they’re your friends.”

“I loved their stories and songs. That’s all.”

Lyonel took another bite and then said, “Mother, I still don’t want to go.”

Brienne looked at him.

“Can’t I become lord without leaving Evenfall Hall? Without leaving you?”

He stood up and went to her, taking one of her long arms to wrap around his shoulders before hugging her around the waist. Feeling the prick of tears behind her eyes, she pressed her nose on top of his head. Trying to remember how the sun smelled on his hair. How his warm little body felt like this.

The next time she saw him, he would be a man. Or almost a young man. He would definitely be no longer her sweet boy. It broke her heart.

“I don’t want to go anywhere that doesn’t have an ocean around it, mother. Or where everything is brown and green. I like blue,” he insisted. “Like your eyes, mother. They’re blue like the sea. I hate green.”

Brienne couldn’t help but chuckle. “But they are the color of your eyes.”

“You have pretty eyes. Father doesn’t.”

She grinned and kissed him. “Come here.”

Pulling him to her lap, she said, “I wish there were another way, Lyonel. I hate that you must leave too.”

“Then I won’t go!” He exclaimed, truly happy for the first time. She shook her head.

“We cannot refuse or disobey the queen, Lyonel.” Brienne swallowed, feeling as if her tongue was suddenly riddled with sand. “It would be treason. Did your maester explain to you what it means? You used it in your lesson today, do you remember?”

He nodded.

“One of the duties of a lord of a castle is to keep the peace among people. It is for this reason why you must go. To help keep the peace in Westeros.”

“But I’m not a lord yet. What if I don’t want to be lord, mother?”

“Ah, but why turn down a castle, my love?”

“Because it means I have to be away from you. What if you forget me?”

“That will never happen.”

“But you will not see me, mother.”

“Are you saying you will forget me?”

Lyonel shook his head.

She smiled. “How can you think I will forget you? You are my only son. Now, if I had a dozen and they all have green eyes I might forget—”

He giggled and shook his head faster this time. She pulled him to her chest again. “I wish you can come with me, mother. Who will tell me stories about knights?”

“You have your books, don’t you?”

“But I don’t like reading. I hate how some of the letters seem to jump and change places.”

“Maybe they are like that because they know you don’t like reading. If you read more, they will behave and stay in their proper places.”

“I like it better when you read to me.”

She laughed.

“Have you ever left Evenfall Hall, mother? Because the ladies in your stories are taken from their castles. Or in the middle of their journeys. Or knights rescue them from towers.”

Brienne looked at him, thinking what to say. How she must say it. “If I answer that question, no one else can know. It’s a secret.”

Lyonel looked excited. “Like buried teasure. A map to a chest full of gold.”

“Um. . .maybe?”

“Please tell me?” He batted his eyelashes at her. She couldn’t help but laugh. He definitely did not learn it from her.

“Alright.” The memories were as clear as if they were only yesterday. The mud underfoot. Shivering through the night in tents. Finding herself warmed by the compliments soldiers and knights gave her, thrilled at their humble offerings of flowers and fruits until told of the wager for her maidenhead. The nights were suddenly far colder. The mud intent on dragging boots.

Once she knew the truth, jeers and mockery fell from the lips of soldiers who compared her eyes to stars and her lips to a young rose. She was a distraction, a danger, she’d been told. Somebody should make a proper woman out of her.

“I was away from home for quite a while. I missed it at first. But. . .but I grew to love being on the road. Being on the horse all day. Sleeping under the stars.”

Lyonel’s eyes were wide. “Mother. Were you a knight?”

She bit her lip, hesitating.

“Mother, please? Do go on.”

“Lyonel, no one can know. Not even your father.”

“I will never tell, mother.” He put her hand on his heart. “I swear it.”

He looked at her with a soft, earnest expression. The sun seemed to embrace him. _The sun’s son._ She took both his hands again, trying to remember the feel of their smallness, their gentle weight. Thinking that in a few years they would be bigger, calloused instead of smooth.

And like her, she knew he would love the dents and other marks wielding a sword would leave. He would bleed to learn but would enjoy every moment of the hard work. He was her son.

“A long time before you were born, I fought in a war. The War of the Five Kings.”

Lyonel’s eyes widened. “The War of the Five Kings? What do you mean you fought? How?”

“Why, with a sword, of course. I fought for a man I believed in. Lord Renly Baratheon.”

“Maester Wylis said he was one of the usurpers. That he betrayed Joffrey.”

Brienne was glad that with Lyonel leaving it meant he would be farthest from the influence of the man. As a mother she knew too well about having to coat the truth sometimes but without actually lying. Her son’s maester could benefit with a lesson or two about that. Better yet, a lesson that included a sword.

“I did not want to leave home but I wanted to fight. And yes, I was drawn to the adventure of it and hoped to become a knight too.”

“But you’re a woman. Women can’t be knights.”

“Yes. They can’t be.” She said, looking at her lap momentarily before returning her gaze to him. “But I was in Renly’s Rainbow Guard. It’s the name he gave his Kingsguard.”

Lyonel gasped. She smiled. “Our secret?”

“Yes, mother. Ours.” She was amused by his shock, watching him scramble for what to say next. “How? Kingsguard are knights. Are Rainbow Guards not knights?”

“Not all of us, because of me. But being honored a spot was more than I could ask for. I treasured it above all. Until you. But. . .back then I did know your father yet. I missed home but I just loved the adventure and hard work of being Rainbow Guard. It really was the most tremendous honor, and from a lord, nay, a king I believed in. But then. . .” she stroked his ear, her eyes warm. “I had you. And everything was different.”

“I stopped you from your adventure, then.” His eyes were downcast.

“No. Never think that. Because you did not. I am telling you this so you will know that no matter how far away you are from Evenfall Hall, it will still be here when you return. My son, you need to see and learn more of the world in order to be a great lord. My experiences in the war have helped me to have a better appreciation of things. You need to go out into the world and while it saddens me, it is necessary.”

“You should be lord, mother.”

“I never asked for it, nor wanted it.” She tapped the tip of his nose with her finger. “Besides, that means me being born a boy. Boys cannot be mothers. I will not change that for anything.”

Lyonel still looked unsure. “But I will be gone for a long time. What if you feel different when I return?”

“No force in this world can pull my heart away from you. You will go farther than Ashemark, have more adventures than I could dream of. But no matter what, you will always find your way home. I will always be here, Lyonel. It is a promise I make to you, one that I vow before the old gods and the new.”

Lyonel returned to her arms. “But who will make you smile while I’m gone, mother?”


	4. Cersei I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “One can never learn enough about what destroys and ultimately kills a man.” 
> 
> *****  
> Doing a Netflix again and dumping multiple chapters in the latest update!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a scene that may show dubious consent.

Grimy hands shook the sack onto the table. Out it thumped, seemingly a bundle of pale and burnished threads until it rolled. The threads were hair, tangles and knots on which fleas still thrived.

Cersei stared at the face that will forever look upon death with agony and horror: eyes wide open, except for the socket that should hold the wicked, evil gleam of an emerald orb, little mouth parted in the shape of a scream. She stared at the eyes, one dark and dead, the other empty and ringed with dried blood and the meat that had dripped after being gouged out.

She stared at the two men. Faceless peasants as far as she was concerned. The few times she had deigned to take the streets in a litter of gold, silk and carved lions, she never looked nor saw faces. It was the stink she remembered. Unwashed yet watery, decay and death. But these two before her would be added in her mind’s collection of men that continued to fail her.

The corner of her lips quirked as one started breathing audibly, quickly, sweating to keep his eyes on the floor. If she had a goblet she could dip it in his fear.

“It’s not him.”

The man she had been staring at dared to look up. The skin around his eyes were loose pockets. Behind her, Ser Gregor advanced. The man wisely returned his eyes to the floor.

“Maester Qyburn,” she said. “What was my offer to the man who succeeds in bringing me that traitorous dwarf’s head?”

“A bag of gold, your grace,” he answered, picking up the head with his bare hands and turning it over. “That and a lordship.”

“Should I offer whores who bathe in milk all day for further enticement?” She asked smirking at the men who were now practically prostrate on the floor. “Perhaps a ship as well? My father crushed the rebellion led by wolves to get my brother back. Do you think I must add more?”

“I believe your grace’s current reward is more than generous.” Qyburn said.

“And what is the debt I can collect for anyone who continues to try deceiving me?”

“Your grace!” The men looked at her then, faces nearly melting in terror as The Mountain swooped in towards them, his sword drawn. It was almost the length of a grown man. “There is no deceit! We swear on our lives. We thought it was your brother!”

“We-we came all the way from Duskendale, your grace,” pleaded one. “The rivers have frozen and we can no longer fish. We heard of your—your generosity—” he looked at his companion, who nodded frantically. “We swear we thought the dwarf your brother.”

Once she might forgive. Another deserved no less. _Brother._ All it took was a look from Cersei and into the slit in The Mountain’s helm. And then his giant sword was arcing into the air, splitting the last to speak through his skull then down. The sound of the blade slicing into flesh and bone was like a hard gush of water. 

The other man could only stare in shock at the half that had fallen at his feet. Cersei sniffed. Gone was that strong, unwashed stink. She smelled blood and piss.

Lannister guards in their crimson and gold armor came to drag the man away. Left alone, Cersei turned to Qyburn. He still held the head, turning it, inspecting it. “If your grace allows, I would like to keep this head. For my further studies.”

“Very good.” She gathered her skirts, checking if there was any blood. Finding none, she continued, “Have your little birds turned up anything about that murderous monster?”

“Your grace, it appears that Lord Tyrion has vanished completely from Westeros.” Qyburn did sound genuinely regretful. “He is likely to have stowed away in a ship.”

Cersei stared at the mess of blood and organs near her feet to calm the hot rage within. She should have known. That wicked little worm who had murdered her sweet mother would of course evade the Stranger. Keeping his pathetic life in exchange for the innocent from the moment he’d drawn his first breath.

“I have to agree. We have been searching for a long time.” Her laugh was scornful. “He was raised a Lannister so I doubt he could subsist even for a week on rats. Or sleep on a bed of stones instead of feathers.”

“It is unfortunate that the common folk have been so blinded with your grace’s generosity. But perhaps today’s lesson would have them clearer in mind.” As Qyburn spoke, he stepped between the split body of the unknown peasant. He crouched, either ignorant or paying little matter to the blood and intestines staining his robes. He inspected the hand lying on his left then the other on his right. “But I must admit such lessons are contributing into the advancement of my studies.”

“One can never learn enough about what destroys and ultimately kills a man.” Cersei glanced at Ser Gregor, who was now back to standing still behind her. His armor and boots were splattered with blood and sticky threads of entrails.

“Indeed.”

“The men. They say they come from Duskendale.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“Do the city gates remain open?”

“I believe they are.”

Cersei turned to leave. There was someone to talk to. “Further luck on your studies then.” Qyburn rose in order to bow as she walked past him.

Once out of the dark chambers, Cersei found herself almost burning in the sun. She squinted at the golden light bathing the courtyard. Above was an endless blue sky without the feather of clouds. _Almost beautiful_ , she thought, grinding her teeth. _If not for the worthless that still breathes._

Yet something in her was moved at the idea of Tyrion seeing the same sky, somewhere in this world. Much as she would like to deprive the criminal of it, she could push for some kindness in granting a man the last bits of beauty he would see alive. She could do that for him, in spite of everything he had stolen from her. He was long overdrawn in his debts to her but she, the queen, would push herself to be generous. In giving she was going to collect everything.

Everything. However much that was. For as long as she breathed.

Walking past a Lannister guard in his post, she commanded, “Find my brother. Bring him to me.”

“At once, your grace.”

In her chambers, handmaidens prepared a washbasin filled with fragrant water, put out a fresh bottle of wine, platters of little meats bathed in spices and herbs, candied fruits that melted in the mouth upon touching the tongue before sliding like liquid silk down the throat. She watched them cast furtive glances at The Mountain and had to fight back a smile.

She barely nodded when they made their little curtsies to her, delighting in their wait for her dismissal.

Oh, the things she could do now. _Everything._ It was amusing how they struggled not to teeter or trip, keeping their long, lithe necks bowed and delicate hands on skirts as they waited and waited. She was almost tempted to stroke the hair of one, a pretty redhead with flawless alabaster skin. The girl would not question, would not even dare whimper if she had Qyburn summoned to drag her into his chambers for studies.

“Leave,” she whispered. She almost laughed at their relief.

She poured wine into a goblet. It gleamed just like blood. She sipped. It was sweet.

“You sent for me, your grace?” Jaime asked from behind the door as she was about to refill it.

She nodded at Ser Gregor to open the door.

Her brother entered the chambers looking like he had been dipped in gold. His hair gleamed with sweat as did his face. Though he’d thrown a crimson coat over his clothes she still saw the maps of sweat on his shirt. He smelled of salt and sun. He wore a sword at his hip.

The Mountain left, closing the doors behind him with a near-silence that was surprising given his huge hands. Jaime glanced at the door then her.

“Where were you?” She watched him head towards the washbasin, flinging his coat on a chair.

“Sparring.” He loosened the laces of the shirt then pulled it off. His chest and back shone and rippled with movements.

“Sparring.” She finished pouring the wine and sat on the silk ottoman at the foot of the bed. “Of course. Play-fighting to your heart’s content while I keep what’s left of the kingdoms you love to remind are not all mine.”

He cupped water in his hands to splash his face with it. Then rubbed more water on his skin. Droplets dripped like gold on his toned stomach, darkening the waistband of his crimson breeches. She sipped the wine and licked her lips.

Suddenly, Jaime paused. With his hands on the washbasin and his back to her, he said, “I hear you’re still looking for our brother.”

“Our brother?” She shook her head. “He’s lost the right to the Lannister name when he had Joffrey murdered. He should never have had our name in the first place.”

“Do you truly believe Tyrion instigated a riot to hurt him?” He turned to look at her.

“He didn’t hurt our son. He had him murdered.”

“The people rioted because they were starving. While everyone in this castle was eating boar meat and fruits, those outside were fighting over rats.” He splashed water to his face a final time then went to sit on a chair far across from her.

“You would know. Were you here?”

“Sitting in shit and piss hardly causes deafness, Cersei.”

“Being stupid and getting captured by Robb Stark doesn’t give you the right to any opinion on what happened while you were gone. I was alone. Holding what was left of the kingdoms after Robert’s death—”

“A death you arranged.”

Cersei traced her finger around the rim of the goblet. “How when I was not there? He’s dishonored me repeatedly with his whores but always I was dutiful.”

She smiled then, expecting that teasing twinkle in his eye that acknowledged her mockery. Instead, he just gave her a look of resignation and what appeared to disappointment.

“Tyion had nothing to do with Joffrey’s death.”

“It’s got his grubby little hands all over it. You don’t know what he’s said to Joffrey. What he’s told me about _our_ son—”

“Our son now? You never let me hold any of the children. You wouldn’t even let me be in the same room with them unless it was out of your hands.”

“To protect them. To protect _us_!”

“Was it your hand that crippled Bran Stark?”

Cersei stood up and stomped to him. “The war wouldn’t have happened, father still alive, my sons breathing and my daughter with me if you had not been driven by your cock.”

He had been relentless pursuing her in godsforsaken Winterfell. Sending her looks and trying to touch her throughout that hellish journey that lasted for a moon in rough country roads. It had been sweet to be wanted so much. It always will be. For Jaime was all hers and her mirror, golden, beautiful, desired even in his white cloak. Out of every woman he could have had, from blushing handmaidens to serving wenches looking at him longingly while pouring his wine, ladies of court with their learned coyness, he had eyes only for her. Burned only for her.

And on twigs and dried, darkened leaves in that tower, looking up in a sky as gray and bleak as the winter that never seemed to truly leave the cold north, she had laid on her back and spread her legs for his mouth. Every thrust of his tongue in her cunt was delicious firebrand, drawing moans from her throat and juices down her thighs. Jaime, her dear, golden, beautiful twin. He had worshipped her for always, loved her in ways that Robert should have. And Rhaegar too.

Love was all she deserved. The songs said so for beauty like hers. And for a long time she’d thought it would be in the arms of a dragonborn, then in the hot kisses of a man honed by storms. But her wedding night with Robert, when he’d betrayed her with another woman’s name while fucking her, that was the last time she had sought love elsewhere.

 _Jaime._ It had been Jaime before they first drew breath, and it was still Jaime the morning after that bitter night. With his kisses and cock, on his beautiful white cloak, he had shown her love that should only be hers.

But just like every man, Jaime for all his prowess in hunting and riding, the sword, was helpless from the command of his cock. Twice during the journey to Winterfell he’d grabbed her under a canopy of trees, gloved hands painfully squeezing her breasts as he whispered about needing her, that it will be quick and they will not be missed. Twice he managed to push a hand under her skirts, between her warm thighs. Twice she had almost begged yes. Twice she refused.

Once in Winterfell, she could no longer caution about eyes and ears. Now there were walls. Dark corners. The abandoned tower. Robert and Ned with their men on a hunt. 

Jaime had cornered her behind the stables, taking her mouth and fondling her breasts just because he could. Whispered that he must fuck her and will no longer wait. The tower, a sagging structure of stone choked with thick roots that looked like fingers about to pull it under the ground had beckoned. He had all but dragged her by the hair to it.

Once there, she had kissed him, giving in at last to the hunger that had been swelling in her for a moon. She kissed his lips as if they were the sweetest fruits, made for her to drain the juice to the last drop. Together they worked on the laces of their clothes, with Jaime taking her breasts in his mouth once they were free. He had suckled her as it to punish her for allowing their children to steal pleasure that should only be his.

For wanting her so much that he thought to punish her with kisses, she knew just how to reward him.

She had spread her legs, uttering not a single word for him to know what she needed: to be worshipped. To be loved again and again.

That was all she wanted. Love from the only man deserving of her.

And a Stark yet again had thought to steal it from her.

“No. But it was your cock that started this war,” she hissed. Glaring between his legs before giving him a hateful look, she added, “And your cock that continues to fail providing me the dynasty you promised.”

She turned to go when he suddenly yanked her on his lap, a firm hand cupping her mouth to silence the scream that was about to leave. Crushing her against his chest, he took her mouth.

She should hit him. Yell. Curse at him. Instead she grabbed at his hair and turned to straddle him. He was hot all over, warmer than life and hotter than the sun. She burned from his kisses on her mouth, her throat, arching when he ripped at the bodice to bare her breasts. She grabbed him again and they fell on the carpets. Their tongues collided. Neither noticed the washbasin crashing into pieces close by, or the water that hit them. Under her hair was the spilled wine.

He shoved her skirts up. She kept kissing him as he battled with the laces of his breeches, scratched his chest when he took too long. Then his cock was free, a golden thrust of skin and man glistening at the tip. Just for her. She spread her legs wide. He fell on her and thrust in her cunt swiftly, roughly. His mouth quieted her moans.

Much later, when the sun was crimson brushstrokes on their skins, she stared into Jaime’s eyes. _There it was._ That look. How she must be looked at as always. As Queen.

There was a soft knock on the door. Smirking, she flung the blanket away, knowing that Jaime would be looking at her full breasts and round hips hungrily. And indeed he was looking at her as she put on a silk robe. His eyes were riveted on the golden bush that scarcely shadowed her swollen slit.

_He will always want me._

She opened the door, barely hiding a smile as the handmaidens paused at the mess on the floor.

Shattered bits of porcelain. Wine-stained carpets. Torn clothes. Scattered food. The room also smelled faintly of sweat and fucking. As the women hurried to right furniture and sweep up the food, and more came in with a tub and jugs of warm water, she lounged on a chair.

No matter how they avoided her eyes, she knew that they thought. The Queen. Her brother. _Her twin brother._ Abominations.

And there was nothing they could do. She wanted to laugh.

Jaime left the bed, splendid and proud in just his skin and her scratches. He didn’t bother with a robe as he strode to a table for a pitcher of water. Cersei could only imagine what her women thought. A beautiful man they can never have. It was on her lips to command them to stare. To stare at her Jaime for it was the last thing they would see.

Once every shard of porcelain was swept up, and wine and fresh fruit and meats placed on new platters, the twins were left alone. Cersei went to the tub and shrugged off her robe.

“Your seed should quicken in me,” she remarked, swishing a hand in the water to test the warmth. “There’s more than enough I worry I will be wetting my smallclothes for days.”

Instead of an amused rejoinder, Jaime responded with silence. Annoyed, she turned to look at him. He sat at the foot of the bed, elbows stacked on his knees. “Is something the matter?”

“I heard what happened today. With the men who brought in another dwarf’s head.”

“Tongues seem faster than ravens here.” She tipped the lavender oil in the water. _Who has been whispering in his ear?_

“A bag of gold and a lordship would inspire even a rat to give me Tyrion’s head. I have no time for deceit.”

“You have all but decreed the slaughter of dwarves. And you are farther from capturing him given what you’ve done now.”

“You almost sound pleased.” She waited until he turned to her.

“He is our brother—”

_“No.”_

She entered the tub and leaned back until the water lapped at her nipples. It felt like pinpricks on the swollen tips. “How can you forget what he did to our mother?”

“You can’t still think that.” He sounded shocked. “You’ve hated him all your life for something that he has always been innocent of.”

“Innocent. Do you think it innocent when he threatened to hurt me through Joffrey? When will you see him for the monster he is? He was born to destroy us. Why you continue to have any ridiculous sentiment for the creature is beyond me. It makes me question as to whose side you’re really on.”

When he answered with silence again, she glared at him. “Jaime.”

“I married you, I live with you. I lay with you whenever you wish. I have done nothing but do what I can to hold what you have of the seven kingdoms.”

“Have you? Because you told me just a while ago you’ve been sparring. I am the one ensuring justice is served for the murder of our son. I am the one who has offered rewards. All you’ve done is negate me. Push me towards mercy for the houses that betrayed us for the Baratheons.” She had hated them since Robert’s betrayal. “And now I hear you’ve yet to act on a direct order I gave you.”

Jaime looked puzzled for a moment then his face cleared. Cersei shook her head. “You hate me for that was done to the peasants that have murdered another dwarf. They would still be alive if you’ve done as you were told.”

“You wish for blood to flood the streets you must make the first strike.”

“Ordering me again, Jaime?”

“Giving counsel. Whether it’s wise, I do not know. But as queen you can not turn away and murder people coming to the city because they have nothing to eat. Even father would not give such an order.”

“No? Has he told you things only you are privy to?”

Jaime did not answer her. Cersei gripped the goblet.

“These starving peasants you defend so passionately dismembered Joffrey. Do you know he was buried missing a leg, his stomach? Fingers? They even took his eyes. Probably thought to pawn them. Or eat them.”

It was all coming back. The City Watch with their heads bowed in the throne room as she was presented what was left of Joffrey’s body. They had found him all over, identified only by the smoothness of his palm, the tattered remains of his silk and velvet clothes. A rage unlike any other had swept through her. Almost drowning her. Red was all she saw as she screamed for the Kingsguard to slaughter the City Watch.

And when their dismembered bodies and blood flooded the room, she called for the heads of the Kingsguard next. By then her vision had cleared, but this time filled with the crimson of Lannister guards slashing heads off traitorous bodies.

Suddenly, the water was cold. She started, sitting up straight in the tub. She expected Jaime’s hands warming her shoulders. Instead she found him still at the foot of the bed.

“Why do you keep doing this?”

She stepped out and splashed water on the wine-stained carpet. Now he looked at her. Of course. Finding his eyes on her cunt again, she grabbed her robe and pushed her arms in it.

“Just moments ago we were happy. Living at last as we’ve always wanted. Why do you have to keep destroying us, Jaime?”

“Because you rule with threats and blood too much and too often. Indeed I was not here when the people turned on you. But I don’t need to revisit that horror with you. You’ve had yours and I have mine.”

“Chained and drowning in your piss and shit is nothing to what I saw of Joffrey’s remains. Of Tommen. Our father.”

“Is this what you really want to do? Play this game of who’s been dealt the worse hand? How can you be so fucking blind despite all you’ve seen?”

“Careful, Jaime.” She said softly. “Just because I might carry your heir now it doesn’t mean you are safe.”

“Nobody is.” He picked up his dirty breeches from the floor then stood up. “Everything I’ve done from the moment I swore an oath for that fucking white cloak is for you. You, Cersei. I gave you children at your command. Kept my distance because of your repeated pleas. Crippled a child. I would have murdered that little she-wolf as you’d commanded if I’d found her first. I live for you. And the few times I have tried. . .tried to help you be the queen you must be you’ve laid them at my feet as if children I’d murdered with my bare hands.”

“Should I wish your counsel in being queen it will be asked. Otherwise the queen I must be is the queen I will be.”

He stepped in his breeches. Laces still undone, he went to one of the windows and gestured sharply. “Have you ever gone outside?”

“Your point?”

“The longer you remain within the walls of the Red Keep, with that monster Clegane at your every step, the faster you will lose your precarious hold on the continent. We have no allies. Who will we turn to once we lose it?”

“We have the Boltons and the Freys. The Westerlands. The Tarths of the Stormlands.” Suddenly, she laughed, remembering the Evenstar’s cow of a daughter. Jaime looked at her in confusion.

“Cease fretting over my apparent ‘precarious’ hold and absence of allies. Instead commend me on my strategy should the people turn on us.” She put her arms around his waist from behind, rubbing her lips between his broad, hard shoulders.

“Cersei. . .” he whispered as her hand lowered to the gap between his breeches. He sighed when her fingers wrapped around his cock. She stood on tiptoes to nibble on the tip of his ear.

“I’ll have the Stormlands in the front lines. That fat, pathetic Wagstaff crushing the spine of his horse and his ugly wife at his side,” she whispered, stroking his moistening cockhead with her thumb. “I heard she’s quite good with the sword. But,” she chuckled, “she could scare even the Others with just her face. The cow that sent grown men screaming for their mothers.”

She walked around Jaime, still caressing him, looking at him knowingly. He was tensed. As he should be, she thought. For she held his right to pleasure. And she could easily turn it into pain.

She tried to take his mouth when he turned away. Pulled her hand and walked away.

“What are you doing?” She demanded as he laced up his breeches. Then he took his shirt and coat from her chair.

“Lady Brienne of Tarth.”

“Who?”

“The Evenstar’s daughter,” he said, sliding his arms into the coat. “The woman you ridicule is not one you should ever wish to cross in the battlefield. Or even a tourney. I would think that earns her the respect of being called her name.”

And then he put on his boots.

“Jaime.”

He looked up from the task. “Your grace?”

“What are you doing.” She repeated.

He finished putting on the boots then stood up, tall and smug. Her palm itched to slap him.

“Why, my duty, your grace. Granted, a duty I’m faced with shortly has little to do with being your Master of Laws and more because I’m your husband and a Lannister of Casterly Rock. The heads of houses from the Westerlands have honored us with a visit and it’s only right that I welcome them. That is unless you want them killed too since they _are_ outsiders.”

“Of course I don’t want them killed,” she seethed. “They’re allies.”

“Do you think so? Because while they supported Targaryens marrying brother and sister, it’s not the same for Lannisters. Twins at that.” His beautiful smile cut like a knife. “Our marriage has not only hit them like a ton of bricks but confirmed Stannis’ claims in that fucking letter.”

“Stannis is dead. All Baratheons are dead, as they should be.”

“Nothing is absolute. The wars should have taught you that.”

“But you’re here,” she whispered. “You are still with me. You chose me. You wanted our marriage.”

“Don’t you?” His voice was just as soft.

She didn’t answer.

“You’ve brought Houses that rose against us to their knees. It should be enough.”

“No!” Cersei flung a hand on the oils and scents on the table, sending bottles crashing to the floor. “Nothing is going to be enough. For every child taken from me ten should be taken from them. For every parent I lost ten should be taken from them. For every time I had suffered—”

“What? The heads of ten lords? Ten wives? Well, there goes our allies.”

As she stewed, he turned and walked to a table untouched from her fury. He poured crimson liquid in a goblet, looking at her.

“As queen you have the burden of holding what kingdoms we have. If you treat everyone as enemy you will lose your precarious hold, sister. _I_ am not your enemy. I never will be. It’s better use of your time strengthening ties within the kingdoms rather than continuing this fucking vendetta of yours.”

“Some lion you are,” she snarled. “Ever since you’ve come back all you’ve done is mewl and whimper.”

“The very things I intend to do when I meet the lords of the Westerlands to assure them they will continue sleeping in feather beds and will still have meat and wine during the winter, however long it will be. In my gratitude for the somewhat pleasurable afternoon, your grace, allow me the privilege of freeing you from the tediousness of such a duty. _You_ clearly know more than I do about the queen you will be.”

Then he held out the goblet to her. She glared at him. He chuckled and put it back on the table. “You’ll have your drink, your grace. I look forward to your sharing what knowledge gained from it.”

As he headed for the door, Cersei hissed, “I have not dismissed you.”

“I fail to see how else you might need me being that you’ve claimed to be so wet with my seed you will stain your smallclothes for days.”

“Speak to me like that again and it will be your last.”

Jaime turned, gave her deep, mocking bow before straightening up. There was no warmth, no intimacy in his smile.

“Why do you do this?” She whispered.

His laugh was bitter. “It is done.”

And then he left. Cersei clutched the robe around her shoulders. When she looked out the window, she saw not a single star or even the moon. There was only darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge, huge thanks to catherineflowers for getting these chapters sorted. At the very least! Though this story is canon divergent, there's a lot that rests on canon elements and from there, making extrapolations that should still make sense, character-wise. My bestie Cathy has been nothing but generous with her time and helping (HA, REWRITING IS MORE LIKE IT!) with several sections of the chapters.
> 
> It's nice that the last update led to a lot of speculation about a particular character. Keep 'em coming! And any questions you have, feel free to ask! I'm always open to discussion. Thank you for reading!


	5. Jaime II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For love he had crippled a child. For love, he would accept all that Cersei really was. There was no choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: SENSITIVE CONTENT INVOLVING UNDERAGED CHARACTERS.

Jaime II

The water stung.

Wincing, Jaime flung the cloth back in the washbasin, hands gripping the edges as he leaned over it. Gingerly, he touched the back of his shoulder, hissing when he touched that spot. Cersei had not just scratched him. Her nails had likely split his flesh near the bone.

What was before mere suspicion was true now. Blood drove Cersei into lust.

She had pulled him from the edge of the tower, taking his head in her silken palms and kissing him passionately while Bran Stark lay broken on the ground below. When she’d demanded that Stark girl’s direwolf be killed for harming Joffrey, she had pulled him to bed, kissing away his warnings and keeping his head locked in her hands so he would forget about Robert passed out drunk on the floor.

He had been barely alive, still only able to croak when he managed to return to her side soon after the death of their last son. She had thought him a specter at first and shrunk away in fear upon seeing him with nary a hair on his head, the firm meat that used to hold up his cheeks now sunken.

But he kept saying her name. Tried reaching for her with a bony hand. He didn’t know how she realized it was him but suddenly she was clinging to him. Her tears spilled on the fresh cuts on his neck that was crudely bandaged. Stroked his cheek. Looked at him. Begged for kisses. _Make me whole, Jaime._

Barely had he been able to glance at the bodies of his father and son still in their armors and smelling of smoke and cooked meat when she took his mouth. Imploring him with tongue in his mouth to take away her pain. He _wanted_ to take away her pain. _Always_ wanted to. And his heart had been shattered too over the loss of a father that terrified him but he’d loved, deep down, and a little boy he never even got to hold once.

They fucked between the bodies of the dead, Cersei’s legs wrapped tightly around his back as she filled his ear with declarations of love and revenge for the Houses that betrayed them. Pain would always bring them together. _The things I do for love._

He refused to think what she had done to that poor, unknown man who’d only wanted gold for the dwarf’s head so he could eat. Cersei’s order to turn away and execute every outsider had sickened him. He did not murder Aerys just to put a knife through innocents.

But his defiance had caused someone his life. Was he a father?

He’d heard murmurs from the servants about Qyburn and his experiments. How Cersei encouraged it and sometimes even sent bodies his way. But it couldn’t be true. He refused to think it true. Cersei lashed out when in pain—who didn’t? And his life had been taking the brunt of it. Making all the hurt in her heart go away.

How much pain did her heart hold?

He scooped water in his palms and wetted his hair, letting the liquid drip down his face, his chest while still leaning over the washbasin. When he felt water slid towards Cersei’s scratches on his back, he no longer winced. He just waited until the burn passed.

Then he poured water on himself again, hardly feeling the burn on his back and ass this time. He soaped himself as if to scrub the skin off, and his actions gave him pause, a flash from the past niggling in his mind. But it fled as soon as it began to form so he wasn’t even sure if it was a real memory or the product of a very strange turn of thought.

Finished, he wiped himself dry, careful to only pat his back, and lightly. The silk of his shirt shouldn’t give much discomfort.

The clean clothes and polished black boots felt like absolution. Putting on a black velvet coat next, he noted the cuffs had begun to fray. It had been a while since he’d new clothes made. With the treasury depleted and more wars to come, it was ludicrous to worry about having new clothes.

Cersei, on the other hand, kept seamstresses busy with a new dress every week.

He celebrated her beauty. Not only was his sister the light of the west, but she truly was the most beautiful woman in Westeros. He could not remember any moment in his life when he never admired her.

She was beautiful even as a child, golden curls and high cheekbones, naturally ruby lips. Even at six years of age, she curtsied with the grace of a princess. Minstrels and bards that came to Casterly Rock sang and wrote poetry about her beauty.

But underneath her sweet, dimpled smile was a little rebel. She would try to sneak past her septa who never seemed to run out of new stitches for her golden charge to learn. Sometimes she waited for Jaime in his chamber, seething about having to learn the proper way of walking, of pouring tea, while he was out in the sun learning to ride and hunt. She had raged that there were no differences between them, that she couldn’t understand why she was designated for skirts and silk slippers and he breeches and boots.

They were only children of six then, and too innocent to understand the world. But longer than that, Jaime had always known it fell on him to comfort his twin sister. So when she had asked him to strip to see what made them so different from each other, he did it without hesitation. She did the same.

“What a little thing,” she had said, thin fingers grasping his cock. He tried moving away, since he wasn’t too sure about being touched like this. He had told her so. But she’d ignored him. As she inspected and stared at it, his hands went to her chest. She was narrow there. Flat and a bit bony.

“It’s like mine.” He removed his hands from her.

“It’s this,” she held him with both hands now. She looked disappointed but kept touching him. “This is why.”

Jaime couldn’t understand what he was suddenly feeling. Warm despite his clothes on the floor. Kind of full, as if he needed to take a piss.

It wasn’t unpleasant.

“I don’t understand, Jaime. It’s so little. Is this why you can go out to hunt while I must stay here to perfect my curtsy and learn to please?”

“But we learn the histories together. The Houses, the sigils—”

She frowned then took his hand. Pulled it towards between her legs. “Look. Touch me. Right here. I don’t have a cock but you’ll see there’s not much difference.”

He had always loved his sister, even before they were born. He wasn’t sure about touching her back but felt bad for her. Her touch made him feel good so why not do the same for her? So he did. And in the following days they touched some more until their mother found out and kept them apart.

As Jaime inspected the cuffs on his coat falling apart due to loosened seams and the areas where the silk was becoming threadbare, he wondered if things would be different between him and Cersei had their mother explained the wrongness of what they had done. Over the years, and through many songs and stories he’d heard, he learned the name of what he’d felt for Cersei even from the womb: love.

If their mother had lived, would she have told them of it, taught that love for your blood was different from the love with a wife? Would he have been willing to listen when the king married his sister?

He left the chambers and walked down the hallway. The ink of the past was dry. As arduous and bloody the journey had been to be with Cersei at last, he refused to have any remorse. What was a lordship and having sons he could call his own? A crippled boy and his butchered family, the kingdom repeatedly torn about? Songs and stories all said that no love was worth fighting for without having much to lose. For Cersei, loved by him from the moment he had drawn breath, no price was too high so long as they would be together at last.

_And here we are_ , he thought, walking past Lannister guards standing up straight and holding their breath despite his lopsided smirk and easy strides. _Three years after the War of the Five Kings and a father and sons gone. Immeasurable losses to finally have and call my sister before all my wife._

He should feel nothing but gladness from sunrise to sundown. Instead he was plagued by thoughts that should be farthest now that he was living the dream.

Cersei’s kisses were still golden fire that melted his frustration and resistance. A part of him still reveled in the fact that the most beautiful woman in Westeros was his, and she had chosen him out of all the men. Yet day by day, the veneer that made his sister so beautiful and arousing, so fascinating and consuming of him, was chipped away. A little voice whispered long ago he knew what would be found once everything had been chipped away.

That voice was louder now.

Cersei was his. _His wife._ He loved her despite the wrongness of it Fought to make it right. He refused to turn away from it. Even he had every chance to give his heart to another, he never wanted to. Time and distance were no match to his love. She was his choice.

He crossed the courtyard, now almost as bright as day by huge braziers from which waves of gold-burnished crimson fire danced to bring warmth in the frigid, open air. On the floor was a painted map of Westeros, commissioned by Cersei. He walked all over that of King’s Landing all the way to Casterly Rock. Guards seeing him approach stiffened and gripped their spears.

Entering the structure across, Jaime went up the stairs next, lit with torches that spilled so much light he thought of moons without the night, just sun and blue sky. Reaching the top of the stairs, he walked further into the hallway until reaching the end of it.

A woman’s high-pitched cries and moans could be heard even when he was still some distance away, and the sounds clearer once he was right in front of the heavy door. The smirk fell from his face remembering a day that felt like a dream.

His brother Tyrion had gone ahead of their host on the way to Winterfell. The journey was one moon but for Jaime it felt longer. Able only to steal kisses from Cersei’s wine-sweetened lips and grope for her breasts in the darkness, he had felt colder and colder the closer they approached the fucking north.

Tyrion had been the light to those days. A dwarf with mismatched eyes, hair almost white rather than gold, he grew up with no love from Tywin and Cersei. Jaime had never understood how they could blame him for Joanna’s death. All the love his sister and father refused Tyrion Jaime gave without question. He taught him to ride a horse when he was older, having helped fashion a saddle so he could still control the animal with his short legs. Taught him to shave the first whiskers to grow on his face. Later, it was Tyrion who awed him with his quick mind and quicker wit, helping him read and fix his handwriting.

He had pulled laugh after laugh from Jaime with his drunken talk, giving him the warmth and comfort he supposed that families should feel but theirs never seemed to have known. Playfully taunted Jaime that the white cloak only meant he couldn’t marry or have children, own property. That he could bed as many whores as he wished since he was the golden, beautiful brother. A walking dream of women from throne to farms.

Tyrion loved women. Which was why he had gone ahead to sink his cock in the first willing woman in the brothel he came across in the north.

When Jaime strolled into the room fretting about reaching Winterfell before nightfall and having to spend nights worrying about freezing his cock off, a woman was bouncing up and down Tyrion. He glanced at her while pouring himself wine, then sipped.

“I know just the remedy for that, dear brother,” Tyrion had drawled, gesturing at the woman. Jaime gave her a good look at last. She was lissome, with deep crimson hair tousled down her shoulders. The upward tilt of her eyes gave her a sly, cat-like appearance.

“This here is Ros,” Tyrion continued, playing with her breasts. She smiled at Jaime.

Jaime grinned and gave her a deep, gallant bow. “My lady.”

“Gods,” Ros exclaimed. “Songs don’t do you justice, ser.”

“Pleasure me first then you can have him,” Tyrion told her, tugging gently at her nipples to get her attention.

“That won’t be necessary,” Jaime said. “I have come here for my brother and only that. Please don’t take too long and try not to break him.”

“Break me! Indeed! It is Ros that will be broken by my cock!”

“And a monster it is, milord!”

Who knew, who could have known, that was the last time any of them had a brush with happiness? Jaime thought, raising his fist to knock on the door. He remembered the relief of Cersei finally taking his kisses, first at the stables, then at the tower. He had been so eager, so desperate for her that when she cupped his cock through the breeches he spilled faster than he could blink twice. But she had not been displeased. Instead she rewarded him by spreading her legs.

“Come in!” Addam called out just as the woman shrieked, “Wait, milord—”

Jaime opened the door, unperturbed by the sight of a woman on all fours in bed with Addam Marbrand.

Blond braids hung loose and messy on a face born to melt in a crowd. For a moment, Jaime was reminded of someone else, a face from long ago. The resemblance was there, but the maid was a poor imitation. Her eyes were big with shock but were the color of a summer sky rather than the deeper blue of water just below the surface.

She tried turning her head to Addam, who was kneeling behind between her thighs. “Milord, this is not—”

“Shall I come back?” Jaime drawled, leaning against the doorway. He winked at the girl in reassurance and got a shy, hesitant smile.

“Nonsense, this won’t be long,” Addam responded, caressing her up and down the spine in a way that made her sigh and arch. Her movements thrust her tits up.

“Come now.” Jaime chuckled. “Surely you can go a bit longer for the lady’s satisfaction?” Then he closed the door.

Addam tossing his head back to get his sweaty copper hair out of his face, grinned then slammed back inside the woman. She moaned. “As you wish, my lord.”

Then he grabbed her fleshy hips, fucking her fast. The woman’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. Addam fisted her hair, keeping her arched. Her tits were the size of small apples, Jaime saw. They swayed fast from the storm of thrusts.

She was fair of skin, her shoulders and chest sprinkled with freckles. He helped himself to a candied plum. The color of her nipples were an intriguing mix of very, very pale brown and pink so faint it seemed an afterthought.

“Oh. _Ser. Ser. Ser.”_

“Where on earth did you find her? Or is she with you?”

As Jaime spoke, the woman lowered her head. She stared at him. Sweat dotted her full upper lips, indicating she and Addam had been fucking for some time. Broad shoulders that flowed to thick but taut arms rocked in tandem to Addam’s thrusts. As the couple’s movements got more vigorous, a bright pink flush swept her from forehead to tits.

He suddenly realized he couldn’t remember the color of Cersei’s nipples. Pale pink? A dark, pink-brown, or maybe bordering on red? All he saw was the gentle pink of the maid’s, and a bolder shade of pink of another’s.

He held his gaze, wondering if the light color of her eyes was from the candles in the room. If they were in fact a more vivid blue.

“All yours, my friend. Or rather, the castle’s.” Addam grunted, his voice taking Jaime’s gaze away from her. “She was putting fresh sheets on the bed when I arrived.”

A servant then. Far from ugly but quite plain to be one of his sister’s personal maids. She had nice eyes and surprisingly all her teeth. They were white too. As the couple continued to rut and test the strength of the wooden bed, he stood to pick up a bundle of brown from the floor. The cloth was rough. One of the girls who cleaned, he decided, who polished the gold and silver but never the sort to pour wine for him and the queen. Or even put out the candles in her chambers.

Jaime draped the woman’s clothes neatly on a silk bench, noticing for the first time she was licking her lips while looking at him. He grinned, amused that someone could still want him despite being clearly his sister’s many times over. If stained sheets were not enough proof, their children should be.

And her eyes told she would be happy to provide him with more cubs.

Thoughts of his dead sons, particularly Tommen who was mostly bone and ash in his armor, caused a shadow to fall in his eyes. He looked away. A dynasty from the ashes of war, he had promised. Children replaced like pets lost.

“I thought to apologize for leaving you in the middle of losing against my sword yet again. But I can see you’ve found more pleasurable company,” he remarked to Addam.

“King’s Landing is never short of pleasures. Not that the Sapphire Isle is significantly lacking in maids,” Addam panted, now holding on the woman’s braids as if they were reins.

Jaime turned back to them. The woman was still looking at him suggestively, hopefully. Addam was not the first lord she’d had, he realized. She was merely a child during Robert’s reign, and Joffrey a rabid, disturbed dog during his short reign to notice. But he felt she was younger.

Whose plant was she? No mere servant would look at him so boldly. Had she dared to do it in Cersei’s presence, Jaime would be the last thing she would see.

“And here I thought you and some lords of the Westerlands have simply come to see me. Why Tarth?”

“To fetch my new page, of course. Too young to travel on his own. It’s the least I could do to ease his mother.” Catching the woman looking at Jaime, Addam slapped her soundly on the ass. “Dear maiden, should I have two cocks to hold your attention?”

“Oh, no, sir. Please. One of yours is more than adequate— _oh_.” She moaned as Addam pulled out and flipped her on her back. He grabbed her legs until her hips were high off the bed, his thighs supporting them. Keeping her legs spread wide, he resumed fucking her.

_“Milord, oooh. Ser. Ser. Milord.”_

Jaime tried distracting himself from the obscene sounds of wet flesh stretched and pounded into by sorting through fruits on a platter on the table. There were plums, apricots, figs, cherries, pears and apples.

“Who is it? The unfortunate boy stuck with you?” Though he already had a niggling.

“The future Evenstar himself.”

Jaime glanced at the mirror. Addam had paused fucking her to mouth one of her tits. As he heard his friend’s wet kisses, he plucked a cherry from the bowl. “Brienne is his mother,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Brienne of Tarth.”

“Indeed,” Addam gasped, rising to his knees and spreading the woman’s legs wide. He grasped her by the ankles, furiously fucking her now. Then she cried out, a tad too enthusiastically since all Jaime had seen was rudimentary but very energetic fucking.

As Jaime went to sprawl on a chair, Addam leaned over the woman to take her mouth. She whimpered, holding him around the shoulders, stroking the hairs on his back, down his ass. Addam kissed down her neck, toward her breasts.

“You’ve never had children, have you?” He asked. He suckled loudly. “Your passage is tight.”

“No. No milord.”

“You should. Your little tits will be lovelier when swollen with milk.” The woman giggled and Jaime heard more loud suckles.

And then Addam got up, leaving the woman spread-eagled on the bed. His tawny skin gleamed with sweat, and the copper hair on his head and chest looked like dark, burnished gold. He was tall and muscled, quite thick in build but light on his feet. His eyes were the color of leaves.

He grinned smugly at Jaime as he strode towards the platter of fruits. Jaime chuckled, elbowing him as he deliberately stood too close, his cock hanging long and thick between thighs almost touching him.

Addam chuckled and took an apple. After taking big bite, he went to a chest where he retrieved a small pouch. “I’d love to have you again when milk drips from them, sweet maiden. Here,” he handed the woman the pouch. The jingling sound told of many coins. “For the wonderful afternoon,” he added softly, caressing her cheek as she held it to her tits. “And for providing me with new sheets later.”

“I did not know she has a son,” Jaime said as the servant girl left the bed. Perhaps now that excitement of fucking was over and with the pouch clutched in her hand, her eyes were downcast. She had an arm flung over her tits and her hand on her cunt.

Addam, wringing out a washcloth over a porcelain basin, said, “She does. A boy of six. Turning seven in a few moons.”

“That’s too young to be taken from his mother.” _And his mother taken from him when he was seven._

Addam nodded while wiping his chest clean, then his cock. The woman, Jaime noticed, was now staring at them, arm and hand still covering her sweet charms. Jaime gave her a gentle smile and took her clothes from the bench. Addam was blocking it.

“Thank you, milord,” she said, suddenly unable to look at him in the eye as he handed her the brown dress. Hugging it to her tits, she did something that was supposed to look like a curtsy but seemed more of a jerk of a knee.

“You’re very welcome. Do you see your shoes?”

“I-I shall find them.”

Holding her dress with both hands now, along with the pouch, , he glimpsed the cluster of hair between her thighs. A finer pelt than the gold of Cersei’s. The hairs were so few he could probably count them.

He was staring at her legs, noticing the absence of fine feathering on skin when she suddenly spoke, forcing him to look at her face.

“I’m Ilda, milord.” Then she quickly dropped her eyes, a shyness that seemed true than for show. “Should you need me.”

She was quick to dress and did find a shoe. Jaime found its partner under a desk. Her cheeks were pink as he handed it to her. He grinned, watching her put it on and hurry out of the room. When he returned to the chair, Addam was lacing up his leather breeches.

“Fucking ridiculous how despite all my hard work, it’s your face she will be thinking of when I fuck her again,” he complained, pausing his progress on the laces to adjust his cock.

“So keep the candles burning. This boy. Your new page. He’s only six, you say?” He frowned.

“The queen wished for her order to be effective immediately. I took no pleasure in it, if it matters.”

_Cersei._ He had thought it a victory when dissuading her from stripping the Houses on the losing side of the war of their castles and lives. Anger over betrayals and the deaths of their children drove her to demand that children of the surviving Houses to foster with the families they had faced on the other side of the battlefield.

Brienne’s boy as page to Addam would be safe. His friend was always trusted on his side during battle and was merciless in the field. But he had no cruel bone. He wished he could say the same for the others. 

“She looks to have aged ten years. But isn’t she still quite young? She was a maid of what, sixteen, seventeen when she was Renly’s Kingsguard? Though it’s hard to imagine her as a child, given her size.”

“Seventeen,” Jaime murmured, plucking a cherry from the platter again. Sweet juice filled his mouth. “Seventeen when she thought to devote her life to that peacock.”

The Maid of Tarth, she had been called. Brienne the Beauty, as she was mocked. A wench Jaime had first laid eyes on when he was fevered from cold, starvation, and the weight of chains binding him from neck to toe. Taller than most men though still a good deal shorter than either Clegane brother. Built thick and strong even without armor. He thought her spun from his delirium.

“So you saw her. Brienne. The Maid of Tarth. Well,” he cleared his throat, “no longer a maid.”

Addam nodded absently, dipping the cloth in the basin then wringing it out again. Patting the cloth around his nape, he said, “She was not too happy when told I will be bringing her son to King’s Landing.”

“She won’t be. As far as she’s concerned it’s the lion’s den.” Cersei better not see the boy, Jaime thought.

“It’s clear she lives for the boy. I almost committed treason just seeing the sadness in her eyes. Unfortunate eyes that lovely are on a face like that.”

“You seem to forget she’s ruthless in the battlefield. She threw you off your horse with just her hand.”

Addam smirked and took the silk shirt that had been laid out for him. “You certainly won’t let me. To be bested by a woman!” He chuckled, pulling it on. “It’s perhaps better women are raised with needle than sword. Poems and songs don’t warn of their anger. And she threw me as if to fling me deeper than Seven Hells.”

“Is she well?” Jaime suddenly asked. At Addam’s look, he said, “She sided with the enemy, that’s true. But she took care of me. Granted it was for the absence of a cock between her legs why she had that burden. She cleaned my shit and piss when Robb and Renly’s fucking soldiers wouldn’t.”

She had not been happy. There was no forgetting that. As Jaime feared for his skin being scrubbed to the bone under her hands, she had laid his sins on him: Kingslayer. Sisterfucker. Murderer. Though he had been barely alive he saw the hatred in her sapphire eyes. Yes. That was the blue of her eyes. Sapphire.

“The boy is her life.” Addam tucked the shirt in the breeches. Working on the laces, he added, quite suggestively, “And she _is_ a good mother.”

Then he gestured at his chest with a downward sweep of his hands before resuming tying the laces. Jaime thought of the gentle sway of the servant’s small tits.

“There’s no question she really is a woman now,” Addam continued, chuckling. Seeing Jaime frown, he asked, “What’s the matter? You’ve said more vicious things to her. You were relentless taunting her about undoing her breeches to prove she has a cunt. Told her she was flat as a plank.”

“She’s Wardeness of the Stormlands Isle now,” Jaime pointed out. “Tarth guards our waters. If that isle falls we’re doomed. And she has to guard the realm without breaking the queen’s terms of the Stormlands never bearing arms.”

Cersei had been furious when he questioned that stipulation in her peace terms. She refused to be swayed towards sense. On top of Tarth being stripped of arms yet having to comply in protecting the continent’s water on the east side, she had also demanded hefty reparations.

“This kingdom will not be able to get back on its feet if we continue dredging up what ripped us apart. Transgressions have been forgiven.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. “Should be forgiven.”

“I apologize. I meant no harm.” Addam said after a moment. It was clear he was confused over Jaime’s defense of a woman whom he owed very little to. But he only knew what he was told.

“The walls in the Red Keep have eyes and ears, my friend. If you’re going to keep your cock up for every servant girl that cleans your chambers, consider keeping your guard as well.” He glanced pointedly at the bed then back at Addam.

As he realized who he’d just been with, Addam let out a sigh. “This is the reason I prefer to stay within the walls of my own keep. The maids are just maids. Bigger tits too.”

“Do the lords waiting in the banquet hall feel the same?” 

“No man will turn down full tits.” Realizing Jaime was not in the mood to jest, he cleared his throat. He looked tense. Worried.

“The Others take their continued rumbling about my marriage to my sister. But if those who’ve sworn loyalty to House Lannister are thinking to renege, I’d rather have their heads on the spike before they make the decision.”

Though he believed what he said, he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to execute it. He had no wish to tread on blood.

“You are asking me to betray a confidence,” Addam protested.

“I never ask, as you well know.”

Realizing that the man before him was not the boy he grew up with, and certainly not the person he had been teasing just a while ago, Addam, looking at the walls, said, “We may have won the war but we’ve yet to earn the gift of a peaceful sleep.”

“May, is it?” But Jaime couldn’t deny it. House Lannister was now a royal house and ruling over Westeros. But how far in in the region? Who exactly did they rule over? Faces of the dead swirled in his mind before dissolving into the void he consigned them to. For now.

“I can’t lie to you, my lord.”

“What will help you have a good night’s sleep?”

“Rebuilding the Lannister fleet would be a start. The Ironborn have a new king. He has been attacking and reaving the coastal towns in our region. There’s no point in storing food for the winter if they will just kill us one by one to get every last grain.”

“Who is it? Their new king?”

“Euron Greyjoy.”

Jaime was surprised. “He lives.”

“Yes.” Addam was grim. “He does.”

_Ships to protect the waters of Westeros, even from their own,_ Jaime thought, suddenly regretting the sweet fruits he’d just had. Now his tongue was dry and there was a scratch in his throat.

“What of Tarth?”

“It gets worse.” Addam poured crimson-purple wine into a goblet and held it out to Jaime, who shook his head. “You’ll need it.”

“I’d rather have a clear head with what you’re about to tell me. Although I may have an idea what it is.”

“Suit yourself. I need it.” Addam threw his head back, taking all of the wine in a single gulp. Coughing and turning red from the burn, he sputtered, “Perhaps I should have gotten two maids. Or three. Fuck the gods. Fuck the gods for what will happen to us.”

“Haven’t they already?”

Addam chuckled, but without warmth or any trace of mirth. Jaime got up to refill his goblet and he shook his head.

“May I speak frankly?”

“Tonight’s not the first time I’ve seen your cock, Marbrand. I wonder why you need to be polite and proper all of a sudden. It won’t cushion whatever shit news you have to tell me.”

“Sailors coming from the east docked at Tarth before coming here all say one thing. `She’s coming. Coming for what’s hers.’” Addam sighed. “Coming to take back what we’ve stolen from her.”

Jaime stared at the wine, wondering now if he should drink.

“However you see it, Aerys being unjust in burning the Starks alive, Rhaegar taking Robert’s betrothed. . .we still took the throne from the Targaryens.”

“I don’t need reminding.”

Addam, either ignoring or truly not hearing him, rambled on, “Those children. That monster Gregor Clegane. It’s one thing to kill a man in battle. It’s called for. But bashing an infant’s head until you can’t tell bone from brains. . .and Amory Lorch stabbing the princess. A young girl who had no idea of evil yet. Kinslaying deserves the wrath of the Seven but children. . .the murder of children calls for justice from gods old and new.” His smile was a slash of white across his face, a shard of ice into Jaime.

“Ten thousand Unsullied. Over two thousand mercenaries. Sixty thousand Dothraki. Dragons that grow bigger by the day. Tarth the easternmost point of Westeros. Just separated from Essos by the Narrow Sea. Tarth, unarmed. Defenseless.” Addam hung his head. “As commanded by the good queen Cersei, First of Her Name.”

“I gave you permission to speak frankly, not insult the queen.”

“My head on the spike might be mercy for what’s to come.”

“Is that you wish? Just say the word and I’ll have Clegane come here.” As Addam paled, Jaime put down the wine. “Regrets won’t shield us for what’s coming. If she comes,” he scoffed. “Sixty thousand Dothraki, indeed. They will never cross the sea nor be anywhere near it.”

A stretch of water to save them, if the gods would deign to send storms Daenerys’ way. He almost laughed. 

“She was married to one of them.”

“And he died. Wasn’t she supposed to grow old somewhere and just die?”

“She didn’t. She’s coming so we will never grow old but definitely die. Tell me I’m wrong.” When Jaime didn’t answer, Addam went on, “The Stranger will come for us all. And for us, likely sooner.” 

Just then, someone knocked on the door. Addam’s eyes went to his sword hung on the wall while Jaime opened the door.

“My-my lord.” The boy stammered. Sunlit curls framed his freckled cheeks.

“Ah, Lord Lannister,” Addam barely hid his relief. “This here is my new page, Lyonel of Tarth, son of the Lady Brienne, Wardeness of the Stormlands, and Lord Humfrey.”

A boy of six? His size suggested older, maybe ten, Jaime thought, looking at him. The boy stared back owlishly with clear, green eyes. Jaime hoped one of the things he learned from Addam was keeping his thoughts and emotions deep within himself. There was no question of his fear.

And sadness too. He’d seen the same look in his mother’s eyes. There was no weakness in his posture. His lanky limbs suggested he would never turn to fat later in life. No petulance or the slightest trace of insolence on his flushed, freckled face.

There was nothing of his father in him, Jaime noted, except the eyes. Humfrey Wagstaff had green eyes, didn’t he? He was almost _sure_ he did. The old knight had the flat, pudgy features of a peasant, though. Fortunately the boy was quite beautiful..

“My-My lord Lannister,” the boy stammered, hesitating for a moment before glancing at Addam. Addam nodded and he bowed awkwardly. Jaime acknowledged him.

“I know your parents, most especially your mother,” he said as the boy straightened up. At the mention of Brienne, some of the sadness fled his eyes. It was clear he wanted to know more. “She is. . .she is a woman of honor. Did she name you after an ancestor of mine, lad?”

Jaime was about to think Brienne’s son was slow since it took him a few breaths to answer but when he did, his voice was clear. “I-I regret it isn’t so, my lord. My mother named me after the Laughing Storm, Ser Lyonel Baratheon.”

Cersei was not going to be pleased finding that out, if she did. “It would be prudent for you to know of another Lyonel within my branch, my young lord. Granted,” he continued, barely masking a grimace, “there is much work my cousin Lyonel Frey has to do to gain the honor of having boys like yourself named after him. Best to say you were named after him.”

At Lyonel’s confusion, Jaime put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re in King’s Landing now. You’re a young boy who has seen little of the world but the law sees us all as equal. Even me, the husband and brother of the queen. Any mention of the Baratheons still rankles. For your safety, it is better you know now than later.”

His mother was right to not want him anywhere near here. Jaime thought Addam should have known better but he didn’t know he would be taking the boy as his ward so soon.

Addam, in an effort to cheer him up, said, “You have done well laying out my clothes for the feast without being asked, Lyonel. You are quick to realize your duties.”

The praise worked. “Thank you, my lord. I hope to never fail you.”

“Without doubt, lad, but it’s still early days.” Addam patted him on the head to show he was jesting. As the boy reddened, he said to Jaime, “He’s been hard at work from the moment he set foot on the ship. If my lord allows it, I hope to bring him with me to the feast so he may better grasp the duties awaiting in Ashemark. Of course,” he told Lyonel, “we don’t have feasts anything as grand here.”

Jaime was not entirely sure but at least with him, the boy would be safer. “I don’t see why not. It’s a good distraction. Maybe for us too.” As if he would be sleeping soundly again. “Bring him.”

Addam bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”

Lyonel hesitated then imitated Addam’s quick head bow. “Thank you, my lord.”

The boy fell in a step behind them as they walked to on the hallway then down the stairs. The entire time, Addam regaled Jaime with his adventures in traveling from Casterly Rock to Tarth. Jaime let him prattle, his thoughts on another war coming for them.

He had only read of the fierce, ruthless Dothraki from books, when he bothered, and Robert’s fear of them was well-known. It was the dragons that concerned him. Harrenhal was a lesson that no matter how thick or high the walls and other fortifications, there was no way to defend the sky from dragons.

And Daenerys had three.

_We won only to live for another war._

The Baratheons gone. The Tyrells erased. The Stark children lost wolves. Jaime cared little for the men and women that had died, and within his family the only deaths to affect him were Tywin’s and Tommen’s. So he thought it strange that when his mind was unoccupied by the tedious business of drafting laws, he thought of the two Stark girls. Arya vanished long before the riots and Sansa’s corpse rotting somewhere deep in King’s Landing. Robb dead and without his head. The two youngest Stark boys burned alive by Theon Greyjoy.

Then Ned’s bastard. Vanished too.

For love he had crippled a child. For love, he would accept all that Cersei really was. There was no choice.

When they reached the banquet hall, Lyonel stepped forward to get the doors for them, grunting under his breath to push at the heavy double doors until Addam came forward to assist him. The boy was blushing again, earnest and also embarrassed. _He’s so much like his mother._ Strangely, and perhaps it was because of the sadness in his eyes, he reminded Jaime of Tyrion.

Though the banquet was only for the few lords of the Westerlands and food and drink hard to come by, Jaime had insisted that only the finest meats, sweetest fruits and richest of wines be served. He also wanted musicians. The first strains of Rains of Castamere began to play as he entered the room. Deep bows and mumbles of “My lord” welcomed him on his way to the high table. Respectful in appearance but he knew as well as everyone else in the room that their support of the new reign was tenuous.

Addam was a few steps behind and also followed him to the high table. Lyonel hurried after him, almost tripping in his boots.

Too late did Jaime think to refuse the wine poured into his goblet. As he stared resignedly at the crimson liquid streaming down the goblet, Addam muttered leaned toward him, “The lords of Lorch and Hawthorne will be requesting a word with you, my lord.”

“Ah. Is only a word they wish or more?” Jaime said sarcastically.

“Their lands and stores for winter took the brunt of the Ironborn’s continued attacks.”

If these fools thought he would be sending men from King’s Landing for their protection, their heads might be more useful on spikes. Guards would mean more bodies for the Ironborn to stab. What they needed was ships to guard the waters. Ships east and west of Westeros to protect from within and forces ready to reclaim lands.

But what about the air, he thought angry at himself for knowing it was a question without answer. _Who would protect us from dragons?_

Staring at the blur of colorful cloaks and sigils like the brindled black and white boar of Crakehall, the black manticore of Lorch and the blue bantam rooster of Swyft, Jaime listened with half an ear to the musicians now singing the bawdy, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” The words burrowed in his head like hooks. 

“From there to here,

From here to there,

All black and brown

And covered in hair.

He smelled that girl. . .”

He couldn’t even pretend pleasure, not with his fears all but confirmed. There was no measure in existence to stop the war. The book will be written differently this time. It already was. _The only Lannisters Cersei and I._ And Tyrion. Wherever he was. All Jaime had was hope that he was somewhere East, explaining why he had yet to be found.

Surrounded by the revelry, looking at pretty serving wenches sitting on the laps of lords clad in supple leather breeches and stroking chests covered in rich velvet, wine seemingly an endless river and the food bits and parcels of little heavens so delicious the Seven could have made them, he wondered if Robb Stark had any inkling at that cursed wedding. If something niggled at the back of his mind. Did the Stranger try to whisper in his ear? The young wolf must have laughed and applauded the jesters, called for more music, and drank wine. Ate morsel after morsel of delicious food. He probably thought of his wife, a slim girl with chestnut hair that Jaime thought was just a tad prettier than a scullery servant. But Robb had married the girl. Fucked her often too—for along with grime, dirt, the cold, and starvation that kept Jaime awake in the blasted camp, he also heard her wails of pleasure.

That was probably the last thing Robb thought. About riding fast back to Riverrun to fuck his wife. Never thinking that he and his mother were surrounded by men ready to sink their knives on every inch of skin and meat they had.

As the last strains of the bawdy song was played, he wondered who he would be thinking about just before a blade ended him. Or perhaps fire. No one could best the likes of him with the sword. But fire. _Fire is the one champion that will never fail._

If he knew when the Stranger would take him, he knew where intended to wait. The way he wished to go if the likes of him could still be deserving of kindness. 

He went to Cersei’s gold-lit chambers after the feast, his ears still ringing from songs, the happy roars of lords and the desperation of the Houses that had spoken to him about the Ironborn.

The twins needed no words. Just a look. Then he was taking her face and her mouth.

Hand fisted in her silky hair, the other on her breast, he claimed her mouth with one hard kiss after the next. Once in bed she never closed her legs, moaning for his cock to burrow deeper and deeper in her cunt. She was ferocious, his true golden lioness.

She bit him, left fresh scratches on his back that made him groan and fuck her harder, faster, longer. As she wailed his name he slammed her back on the bed and went to cover the rest of her with more kisses. Soft ones. Hungry ones. Worshipful brushes of lips.

He sniffed her throat, noting the odd hint of sweat and sun. His cock hardened some more. He ate at her shoulders, marveling at their strength. As he nudged her tits with his nose, he saw faint scars on her skin. He frowned, mouth full of plump nipple tasting of sweat as he noticed other scars on her arms.

Yet he found these strange marks beautiful. Testaments to her strength. Because for everything that had tried to destroyed Cersei, she was still whole. He released her nipple and kissed down her stomach, noting a surprising tautness of skin and muscle.

He should take his time.. They were married now. Their hold on the kingdom tenuous but it was theirs. They were free. He could look at her when he fucked her now. Really look at her.

So he did.

Blue eyes stared back at him. Blue eyes instead of green. The secret blue of the sea under the surface on which the sun was a pale ray of light.

He stared at her, shocked and horrified at his betrayal, embarrassed that instead of softening his cock stiffened and pressed deeper in the wet clutch of her cunt.

He turned to leave the warmth from between her legs but saw the thick, wild tangle of pale hairs. They covered her entire mound and trailed long toward the inside of her thighs. They shone like streaks of raw gold in the candlelight. The gold of his own hairs was lost in the mix.

“Jaime,” she whispered, touching him. It was wrong that a palm so rough could give him the gentlest touch. “Jaime.”

And just like that, revulsion and fear left him. He spread her legs wider. Pulled out to bury his tongue in her cunt.

Her juices flowed into his mouth like a rushing river, but hot—hotter than fire and sweeter and richer than sun-sweetened or candied fruits. He did not deserve this. But wanted nothing else. He didn’t know what else he could want, why he should want more when he was drinking heaven. In between slurps, he gasped her name.

Jaime woke up, wide-eyed from the darkness surrounding him. He thought he’d found his doom until with a few blinks he made out the shape of furniture in the room on which moonlight had fallen. He turned to the side of the bed, both dreading and hoping for Cersei. But he was alone. She was in her chambers.

He staggered out of the bed and onto the floor, tripping and almost falling headfirst on a table that memory rather than sight told him should be there. He groped for decanter, glass, hoping the servants had filled it with water rather than wine. The mystery liquid sloshed into the glass, wetted his feet. He drank.

Water. He poured another. His throat hurt, as if he had been screaming. But the dream, strange an intrusion as it was, was no nightmare. He scrubbed hands on his sweat-damp face, his hair as he sat on the bed, wondering if another woman’s name had left his lips.

He swept the blanket around his shoulders, wondering who would protect him if had he been overheard. If the walls would soon betray him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This. Was. A. Fucking. BRUTE. Of a chapter!
> 
> Jaime, to me, is one of the most complex or perhaps, the most complex character in the books. When doing fanfic, it's his voice I often struggle with. Here, catherineflowers' love for Jaime was invaluable. She really was a great, wonderful help in getting this chapter right! There were scenes I had to remove to streamline the narrative but I think this final version is a lot stronger than previous drafts. That's right. DRAFTS!


	6. Brienne III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My son would learn more about being a leader with me. Here. He would be a storm rather than some fancy, golden lad who roars. A sure strike to the throat will end a roar.”   
> Brienne almost laughed. Humfrey was not even a drizzle.   
> “Do you not stand with me on this, you?” He suddenly spoke to Brienne. “What fulfilment do you find in your days when you’re not being a mother?”  
> Her answer was swift and cool. “Being your wife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beginning in this chapter, the story time-jumps to two years. 
> 
> ******  
> Sending happy and huge thanks again to catherineflowers for helping me with the latest updates!

The warmth of the dining hall with its fireplaces and braziers were no match for the unwelcome guest that was winter. Fires flickered and wavered against its cold breath. Brienne shivered under her cloak, drawing the heavy, fur-trimmed swath closer to her body. Gloves gave her hands some protection but she still held on to the cup of hot maidentea. Her stomach grumbled for food but she craved warmth more.

A servant went to stand next to Humfrey to pour wine in his goblet. Brienne had never been drawn to wine nor had she really developed a deep liking for it. But she stared enviously at the rich liquid streaming into the goblet. It was so smooth and clear it reflected the golden flecks of fire.

The words for a request of the drink were at the tip of her tongue but she didn’t speak. For dining with her and Humfrey tonight was the maester, Wylis.

When compared to him, Brienne preferred hosting winter.

Wylis had been the one to concoct the foul brown liquid, the herbs and spices of which he refused to disclose despite Brienne’s demands. Humfrey all but forced the tea down her throat in the early days, reminding her of her duty to give him more heirs.

But two years on and his seed had not quickened in her womb. The drink, named maidentea, had so far done nothing in bringing back her moonblood. Not even a single speck of blood on her smallclothes.

It tasted of blood and mud, still foul as it was the first time. She scowled at the cup. The only thing it had done right was prevent her gloved fingers from turning into icicles.

“My lady.” She managed to hide the scowl as Maester Wylis prompted her from across the table. His face mirrored the glaze and gleam of the meat cooked on a spit for hours that was now on the platter for them to partake. His yellow-white hair stood out like blunted spikes around his head. “Your tea is best drunk while warm.”

“I am waiting for my lord husband to give his judgment on the wine before I take any pleasure from this. . .blessed drink,” she said while Humfrey quaffed the wine and gestured at the servant sharply for a refill.

Humfrey looked pleased, his cheeks red from the drink. “What did I tell you, eh, Wylis, about making her a proper woman? Now she puts my pleasure first. And I don’t have to pay her with coin.”

As the men laughed uproariously, Brienne reached for the cup. With them at the table and servants awaiting them, there was no way to pretend drinking the cursed beverage. She took it all in a single gulp, heart racing. When she put it down, Humfrey and the maester were staring at her.

Dabbing her lips with the napkin, she murmured, “Merely following your advice, maester.” She grabbed a sliver of pear from the platter, the sweet juices filling her mouth.

“Look at her,” Humfrey said, helping himself to the meat and fish, piling his food high. Drowning them in sauces from pureed fruits and crushed spices, he continued, “She heeds your advice. Drinks the maidentea with her meals now without a fight. I thought she’d learned another lesson until I found out she had a sword made and sent to my son on his ninth nameday.”

“My lady, that goes against the peace terms of the queen,” Maester Wylis protested. “Did you not think how it could endanger us if the queen found out?”

“Being as the sword will be used beyond the borders of Tarth and the Stormlands, we are not in violation,” Brienne said calmly. Humfrey looked as displeased as he had the day she had given the same answer. She hadn’t told him of the gift but Lyonel had written thanking them both.

How she had relished telling him about the sword. His slap did little to hamper her joy over the gift and her answer.

“The treaty is all we have, a piece of parchment that makes us still part of the Seven Kingdoms. But what do women know about such things,” Humfrey laughed. “It’s no wonder the departed Lord Selwyn, Seven bless his soul, wanted a husband for his daughter. Mothers want only the best for their sons. What do you they know of wars and treaties as long as children are happy?”

“My lord, you must try convincing the queen that it is your signature that must appear on official papers from now on,” Wylis said, taking as much food from the platters as Humfrey. “The lady Brienne was never taught leadership. She also willingly fought for that usurper Renly.”

“We all fought for the usurper, don’t forget. But you are right. I am the husband, after all. All of Tarth serves me. And it is because of me why we have a future Evenstar.”

“Indeed.”

“Westeros has a queen and in the north they have warrior women but is the battlefield really a woman’s place? Or the Iron Throne?” Humfrey turned to Brienne. “What do you say, my lady wife?”

“So many things to answer. Which one do you wish for me to share my thoughts on first?” She asked, pretending to organize the collection of silverware around her plate.

“See,” he said, grinning at the maester. “Respectful. I succeeded where the old Evenstar failed.”

Brienne’s grip on the knife tightened. The men went on talking and guffawing, ignoring her. As she calmed, she slowly uncurled her fingers from the knife. Lest Humfrey notice, she quickly took a small portion from the fish and some vegetables.

Sauces, butter and spices helped disguise that the fish was a bit old. Rather than flaky, it bordered on mush, even watery. The same went with the vegetables, chewy rather than crunchy.

Winter began a year ago but the maesters at the Citadel continued sending warnings throughout the continent that far from reaching an end, it was only beginning. The ocean spared Tarth from the worst of it. But waterways deeper into Westeros were frozen. Thus is took trading ships weeks, sometimes even moons to travel and sell their wares.

Ships from Essos carrying silks, spices and foods had decreased dramatically as well in fear of the wares going unsold or in the case of food, spoiling due to the waters that suddenly froze. Those bold enough to still sell priced them at twice the price. At least.

The Sapphire Isle still yielded scallops, crabs and other seafood but they were smaller. Though the ground was still visible instead of being taken over by snow and vegetables still grew, they struggled. Evenfall Hall’s greenhouse kept the castle supplied.

During the days of Selwyn as Evenstar, what food the castle had, no matter how little, was still distributed to the people. Humfrey, chafing at being merely the husband and father of the future Evenstar, laughed off Brienne’s suggestion to at least distribute bread to the poor. He reminded her that they worked, as he did. That what little reward they got was a reflection of their efforts. He believed providing them with food would encourage idleness.

As Brienne tried to swallow the unpalatable dish, Wylis continued to shower Humfrey with compliments. She saw the servant refilling his wine again. He wore a cloak like Brienne, but the slight tremor in his hand suggested he was feeling cold too—probably colder than she did.

“Your courage is admirable, my lord, if you’ll permit me to say so. But I must agree that having a woman on the throne and married to her twin brother—”

He suddenly paused. Humfrey was quick to catch on, his tone ringing with approval at the turn of the conversation. “An abomination.”

“Indeed, my lord. An unforgivable one.”

“People are only loyal to her because she is a Lannister. But she’s hardly one.” Humfrey shook his head and gestured for a servant to pour him more wine. “Tywin would have the twins murdered before the lunacy of marrying each other had fully formed in their heads.”

“If I may,” Brienne suddenly spoke up. They looked at her. “Though we can count on the loyalty of the men and servants around us, perhaps we should take care in having such strong opinions about the queen.”

Humfrey’s pale green eyes narrowed at her while Wylis looked aghast that she had dared spoken without waiting for permission. Unwavering, she said firmly, “Cersei is the queen.”

Cersei Lannister didn’t have one ounce of Brienne’s loyalty, even as a woman, but the turn of the conversation made her stomach roil. Loyal as Humfrey believed the servants and guards surrounding them, it took only one pair of loose lips for his true thoughts on the queen to travel swifter than a raven. Brienne had it on good authority that Cersei was quick to punish anyone she merely deemed slighted her.

Humfrey and Wylis’ words, should they reach her perfect little ears, could put the existence of all of Tarth in further danger. The reparations they were still paying had crippled the local economy, with the crown taking seventy percent of their goods on top of heftier taxes. And if Humfrey went on with his foolish request for Cersei to permit him to sign his name in all official documents and decrees between the crown and Tarth, she would have his head on the spike.

“She won’t be queen long as long as she remains without an heir.” Humfrey affected a loud sigh, grinning. “She and the Kingslayer. Five years on and still no child.”

“Unless you believe Stannis’ claim, my lord,” Wylis reminded him.

Humfrey waved his hand. “The girl? The only one alive? Bah. Claiming their golden hair proved incest early on will be just like declaring Catelyn Stark fucked her brother. Have you seen any of her children with Stark? Auburn hair, the lot of them. And her eyes too.”

This one she _couldn’t_ be silent about. “Though the Starks were on the other side of the rebellion, Lady Catelyn was a woman of honor.” Her voice faltered, remembering. “Neither of you have met her or spoken to her personally but she was kind and generous enough to help me on the day of our wedding.”

There was little of that day Brienne let herself remember. Lady Catelyn’s quiet strength was one of them. She could barely contain her tears as she sewed Brienne into a dress fashioned from whatever swath of fabric could be scrounged up in a war camp. Leather from Selwyn’s cloak, silks from Queen Margaery’s old dresses. Every thread from them had been saved by Lady Catelyn and the few maids she had put to task to fashioning a somewhat decent dress for Brienne to wear.

A wedding. Brienne never thought it would happen for the likes of her. Songs taught her what to expect but the circumstances that brought her to this day were right out of a dirge—or the makings of one.

And there was pain. A cutting, acute pain from being forced to witness her weapons and armor melting in the flames.

While one maid worked on the hem of the skirt to make sure it grazed the ground rather than showed her worn boots, two worked on the sleeves. Lady Catelyn worked swiftly with needle and thread on the bodice.

“Step back.” Quiet as her tone was, there was no mistaking the command. The maids were quick to obey, rising to their feet so Lady Catelyn had room to go round Brienne, inspecting the fit and fall of the dress. Though her gaze was critical, Brienne saw a deep sadness in them. But it was not for her.

“It is the best that we can do, I’m afraid.” Lady Catelyn looked up at her. She smiled but it fell quickly from her face. “But your husband will get you more dresses. Much better than this.”

Brienne inspected the sleeves. They were silk and pale blue, the color of the sky just after rain. “It has been ages since I’ve donned a dress,” she said. “So long I have forgotten how uncomfortable I feel in them.” She touched the cuff on her sleeve. “I don’t even recognize the stitch. My septa gave up on me on that.”

Catelyn suddenly took her hand. “That reminds me of my daughter. Arya.” She squeezed her hand in her thin, fragile ones. “My wild little girl. If the gods are kind they would let me see her again. And Sansa. Let me hold them again and help them in their wedding dress like now.”

“I’m so sorry, Lady Catelyn.” Brienne dropped her eyes to the floor. “I’m—I’m hardly suited as daughter of my own father—"

“Hush, child.” Catelyn shook her head as she put a hand on Brienne’s sink. Her palm felt like crumpled silk. “I should be the one apologizing. This is your special day. There should only be happiness.”

Brienne kept silent. A special day, indeed. She would never know feel of the sword in her hand again. She would forget footwork and other stances for fighting. All the skills that took her years to master forgotten by a body consigned to softness and children. _Heirs._

At least, if the Seven were kind, with this marriage, she would fulfill her duty as Selwyn’s daughter. Even when it meant children that were also Humfrey’s. Perhaps he would be like her father. Strict and traditional but with room to indulge a wife.

“What’s the matter? Are you unwell, Brienne?”

“No, I’m not, my lady. I am just. . .” She glanced at the maids around them. Catelyn looked at them in the eye.

“Leave us. But do not stray far.”

One by one the girls curtsied then left the chambers, leaving them alone. Brienne hugged the unfinished bodice to her breasts, the touch of leather akin to the caress of warm skin. But it felt strange, not merely because she knew too well it was only cloth and not a warm body, but the absence of fur tickling and dragging at her nipples. She went to the window and looked at the tower across.

“Is there anything you wish to say, Brienne?” Catelyn asked gently. “We are alone. And. . .and I’m a mother. If you have questions about the wedding night, I have answers.”

 _As do I._ But she remained quiet.

“It is best to let the man do everything,” Catelyn said when Brienne still refused to say anything. She thought her flushed face conveyed embarrassment. “He must prepare you, of course. A decent man would make sure there is as little pain as possible.”

It was almost an exact repetition of the words whispered in her ear from the previous night. _He should prepare you. There is no pleasure from tremendous pain. He should make sure there is as little pain as possible. I will make sure there is little pain as possible._

“Lord Humfrey seems. . .I don’t know him, my lady. And he is to be my husband. As you’ve seen this morning he’s determined to take everything of mine that he believes no woman should ever own.” Brienne voice shook, remembering. “I thought. . .I truly believed that in songs winter will never come for the likes of me. That it will always be summer. I had those thoughts as a soldier. Now. . .who will I be? What am I after he has burned the things I love? What can I do that it doesn’t happen again?”

“Brienne, you must remember that there are certain things expected in a lady. Wielding a morningstar is not one of them. Something tells me Lord Humfrey appreciates a traditional upbringing in a woman.”

“My lady, I know the sword more than needle and if you haven’t heard already, the men here think I’m some freak.”

“Jaime Lannister is the last man you should listen to.” At Brienne’s startled look, Catelyn looked displeased. “He should be gagged. He shouldn’t even be alive. It makes you wonder what game the gods play keeping a man who betrayed his king and abuses his sister. . .a man who tried to _murder_ my son. . .alive.”

She turned away from Brienne, a hand pressed on her middle as shallow, rapid breaths left her. She sat down heavily, looking very tired and frail. Brienne slipped off the unfinished bodice and sleeves because they kept slipping. She threw a shawl over her shoulders then went to pour water.

“Here. My lady, drink this.” She held the glass and Catelyn took it. She drank, hand on her chest. Brienne tried to pour her more but she shook her head.

“I’ll be fine, Brienne. I’m sorry. I should be taking care of you, not the other way around.”

“You’re helping make me a dress already. That is. . .it’s a great kindness, my lady.”

“’Tis what a mother would do. Your mother would do a much better job. But I shall try.” Despite her smile, her dark blue eyes remained sad. “You deserve no less. Lord Humfrey may be. . .difficult at first but the more time you spend with him, the more you shall know him. He might just surprise you, Brienne. Kindness is what matters above all. You will find that with him.”

It mattered little if Lady Catelyn had been lying or truly meant her words because Brienne would soon find out that kindness within Humfrey didn’t exist.

And remained elusive to this day. Brienne, returning knife and fork to the plate to cut more of the fish to eat, spoke to her husband and the maester. “The dead cannot defend themselves. We can not sing them praises all the time, it’s true, but won’t it be wiser to remember their goodness?”

Humfrey snorted.

“Catelyn Stark was nothing but generous to your wife, my lord husband.”

“Goodness! Generosity!” Humfrey exclaimed. “Dear wife, we wouldn’t have had wars in the first place if she hadn’t kidnapped the imp! She was a stupid, mindless bitch for provoking Tywin Lannister. The dwarf is worthless but it was enough for Tywin to call his banners.”

“Pinning the blame of her crippled son on Jaime Lannister was a mistake,” Wylis seconded. “There was no proof at all. The seven kingdoms were torn apart by the ravings of some mad woman.”

“Ah, but now we are in for more madness with Cersei on the throne,” Humfrey said, chuckling and raising his goblet. Wylis laughed too and together, they clanked their goblets, spilling some wine on the fish, the table.

“But,” Humfrey suddenly said, pausing to sip. He waved the glass in Brienne’s direction, and she turned to avoid getting splashed by the wine. “The Lady Brienne is right. The dead cannot defend themselves. All the better!”

As the men lost themselves laughing again, Brienne tried to concentrate on chewing every morsel of food.

 _Father, what have we done?_ Brienne refused to resent Selwyn for thinking to betroth her to the man in the first place, and herself for losing the fight. She’d given Humfrey three broken ribs and a smashed nose but the sand he managed to fling to her eyes stole her freedom. Yet her thoughts, as of late, tend to wander on how different things might have been.

She wouldn’t be married. She doubted if she would be alive. The last battle had halved the soldiers on both sides.

No Lyonel.

That was the hardest truth to bear had things been different. Her son wouldn’t be alive. He was the one reason why she wouldn’t think to change one thing about what had happened, hellish as they were. _A child for a sword._ It was the one trade she was at peace with. 

But with Lyonel gone and still squiring at Ashemark, she wondered how much more she could endure life in a castle where every servant was loyal to Humfrey. His punishments had not increased nor worsened but he still perceived most of her behavior as a personal affront. These last two years have been the longest of her life. Such that wartime seemed bliss and Jaime Lannister’s insults gifts compared to being locked up and bound.

“Now, Wylis, you must wonder why I have you at the table this supper,” Humfrey began, wiping his mouth clean before tossing the napkin on the floor. As a servant scurried to pick it up and another hurried to provide him a fresh one spread on his lap, he said, “You are the eyes and ears of Evenfall Hall.”

“A tremendous honor you have granted me, my lord.”

“Good. Good. Because while it’s unfortunate I’m not the Evenstar, I am the father of the future Evenstar. ‘Tis for him I have to take care of the isle. And Tarth is now the seat of Stormlands.”

“He is a smart lad although, if I may say so, too spirited due to his mother,” Wylis said, glancing at Brienne. “But squiring for Ser Addam Marbrand should carve him into disciplined man when he is older and a strong leader of his House.”

“My wife means to make a warrior out of him,” Humfrey said, chuckling again. “A path which suits me just fine but I asked you here for your honest thoughts about having him squire so far away from home. Won’t he be more learned in the ways of the Westerlands than the Stormlands? Where would his loyalties lie? He has been gone too long already.”

“Surely my lord is not worried about his son not putting his House first?”

“I am his father. Shouldn’t his loyalty be with me? Shouldn’t he be molded according to my ways? What purpose was there for my seed?”

 _He wants my son returned to become a mirror of him._ Horrified, Brienne felt what little of the food she had put away churn in her stomach and rise. The muddy aftertaste of the maidentea aggravated her discomfort. “Quickly,” she suddenly told a servant to her right. “A cube of sugar.”

“What is it now?” Humfrey whined. “Do you mean to ruin dinner for us? Could you not behave properly at least until the hour is over?”

“Begging your pardon,” she said through gritted teeth as the servants scrambled to see to her need. One of them approached her with a dish of sugar cubes. She didn’t wait for one to be given. She fisted a few and put them in her mouth. As her husband and the maester gave her disapproving looks, she gasped, “Please. I’m afraid the meal doesn’t seem to agree with me.”

“She might be with child,” Wylis said slowly, standing up. Brienne shook her head, not wanting him to touch her.

 _No._ She wanted to scream. She gulped water. _No, and I pray I never will have one again with him._ But she nodded, affecting weakness. “I—I have been feeling unwell all day.”

“You must go to my chambers at once,” Humfrey said.

“There’s no need for that,” she protested, holding up her large hands when servants and guards came to get her. “I’ve just had a spell, that’s all. And we’ve never had the maester join us at meal before. Surely, my lord, you wouldn’t want to give him the impression married a weak woman.”

“Of course not. Alright. You may stay. But you have to keep yourself calm. He will have to examine you after the meal.”

Brienne waved the servant with the sugar cubes move away. Humfrey spoke to Wylis again. “I intend to write to the queen requesting her permission for Lyonel’s return. What do you say about that?”

Wylis looked at Brienne, as if expecting her to do or say something. She pushed food around her plate instead, affecting distraction.

“As a father,” he began. “Ah. . .it is understandable why you want Lord Lyonel here. He’s a good boy. Considering the half of him that hopefully squiring has stamped out,” he added, glancing at Brienne again. He wanted to get a rise out of her and she was choosing to ignore him. “But—But having him as a ward of the Marbrands is part of Queen Cersei’s peace terms, my lord. If she were to grant your request it would mean allowing all the other Houses missing their children to make the same request. And who knows what other pardons they might demand?”

“Surely she has forgiven the betrayal of the Stormlands already? I have been nothing but loyal.” Clearly upset, Humfrey took large portions of meat and fish again from the platters before stuffing his mouth. “I do not even question her foolish order to disarm all of the region yet also demand we guard the waters. The rest of Westeros laugh at her about it but not me.”

“The queen is not one to forgive easily especially since she lost her youngest son in the last battle.”

“What a foolish, vengeful _woman_. Spreading her legs for her brother at that.”

“My lord!” Wylis protested while Brienne paused in her eating.

“My son would learn more about being a leader with me. _Here_. He would be a storm rather than some fancy, golden lad who roars. A sure strike to the throat will end a roar.” 

Brienne almost laughed. Humfrey was not even a drizzle.

“Do you not stand with me on this, you?” He suddenly spoke to Brienne. “What fulfilment do you find in your days when you’re not being a mother?”

Her answer was swift and cool. “Being your wife.”

“Wife! You can’t even give me another child.” He held out the goblet and a servant scurried with more wine.

“If your aim is to teach our son to be a future Evenstar, do you not think it better for him to hear and learn of your deeds? Distance need not be a hindrance, my lord husband.”

“Do you mean to lecture me?”

“There is, I have to admit, some wisdom in the words of the Lady Brienne, my lord,” Wylis spoke up, sounding quite pained at having to agree with her. “Deeds do have a way of traveling swiftly. The boy can’t even sit down long enough to read a few pages without stumbling over words that he claims to twist to and turn. But his hearing is excellent.”

“What a pride to my House. An Evenstar with working ears,” Humfrey scoffed.

“If you mean to write the queen, why not write to her about something that shows your sincerity to protect the continent, my lord husband? The crown?” She couldn’t stomach another sentence from him declaring Lyonel was all his.

“Oh? And what do you think I should write to her about?” Humfrey demanded, stabbing the fork with more force than usual into the meat before shoving it in his mouth. “Suddenly you are brimming with all these ideas.”

“If you wish for her to see you as the man you believe yourself to be, a demonstration of loyalty and service to her would prove invaluable for the region. The disarmament of the Stormlands, for example.”

“My lady,” the maester interjected. “These are matters beyond your usual grasp.”

“My lord father was kind enough to have me taught the sword and other weapons, along with the honor of service to a lord you believe in. Those are my reasons for serving Renly, brief as it was.” Her voice softened, remembering the heady rush of being just like a knight in songs. “I may not know military strategy and diplomacy, not as much as you do. But it’s my name on the treaty. The disarmament of the region while shouldering the burden of protecting the waters are things of concern. On top of reparations.”

Humfrey sighed loudly while the Wylis shifted in his seat. “My wife, don’t you think you should concern yourself with matters more befitting your sex?”

“It is precisely because I’m a mother why I bring up the continued disarmament. I care for Tarth. Tarth is the easternmost point of the continent. Thus any attack from the east would strike us first.”

“Lady Brienne—”Wylis tried to protest.

“If Tarth falls, there is no seat awaiting Lyonel. And every one of us here at this table know perfectly well that the queen will not see that as a failure but a betrayal. Treason.”

“So what do you propose, eh?” Humfrey had begun to eat rapidly as she spoke. He coughed so he drank the wine in a single gulp and gestured for a refill. As a servant poured drink again, he said, “We arm ourselves? Break the pact to Cersei? That’s treason too.”

“Of course we keep the peace terms. I don’t recommend dishonor in any way, for any reason. However, if you do decide to write—”

“If? Of course I’ll be writing to her. I might even request an audience.”

Cersei was going to tear that request up before she’d even finished reading it. She hardly acknowledged lords and ladies from other noble houses, let alone members of a House she despised.

“A bold decision, my lord,” Wylis said, nodding.

At Brienne’s absence of acknowledgment, Humfrey glared at her. “You do not approve? I don’t need your permission.”

“No, you do not. But it is not your name on the treaty, my lord husband. As serious a concern the disarmament is, if I may say so, an audience with the queen might be drastic.”

Humfrey chuckled. “You are a well of knowledge tonight. The maidentea seems to work better on the other end rather than where it matters.”

“It’s said that a woman with child tends to behave rather oddly. As you can see, my lord.” Wylis explained.

Humfrey, looking at her, sighed then said, “Alright. The tea appears to have chosen to imbue your mind. If you think I should only write to the queen, what should the letter say, hmm?”

“Emphasize to her your desire to protect and defend her territories. And then request for a lifting of the disarmament clause.”

“And why on earth is there a need to protect and defend this side of her kingdom?”

“There are whispers. All the way from Essos to our very halls.”

“Of course you hear voices.”

“Whispers of an imminent attack by Daenerys Targaryen to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms.”

Humfrey reddened and Brienne knew, she knew she was going to be snatched from this table and flung to her chambers by guards. Wylis, in probably the only act of selflessness and maybe wisdom, saved her with what he said next.

“Unfortunately, the words the Lady Brienne speaks are true. Daenerys has been gathering her armies for years. The sailors say she plans to attack soon.”

“For years that is all those sailors have been talking about. Years!” Humfrey exclaimed. “It’s chatter. No better than the mindless chatter among fishwives and folk who believe in. . .in…kraken, ice spiders, dragons. Dragons!” His laughed boomed across the hall. “Dragons don’t exist. Is this truly happening? My maester, a learned man of the Citadel seconding my wife’s worry about some child with her imaginary dragons?”

“Without a navy manning our waters we can not be warned of any attack, let alone all of Westeros,” Brienne said quietly. She had to be careful. “And without an army Daenerys can claim the water and begin a blockade for all of Westeros.”

“And that is what you wish me to write the queen? Implore on her mercy to let us bear arms to protect her kingdoms?”

“Appeal to her reason. If not her then Ser Jaime.”

“Foolishness,” Humfrey spat.

“Your lady wife makes a good point, my lord, hard as it is for me to admit,” Wylis said, sipping wine for several breaths as if for courage. Setting the goblet down, he looked at Humfrey in the eye. “If the letter were drafted in a way that it is the crown’s best interests that spur you, and when Daenerys attacks—”

“When!”

“My lord, she will.” Wylis looked at him in the eye, his voice firm. “She will. It’s only a matter of when that will be. It could be tomorrow, the next day, a moon from now. And when she does, who do you think Queen Cersei would reward for defending her territories? Who will she trust, who will gain her respect, her gratitude?”

Humfrey’s eyes gleamed. “I can have her name me the Evenstar.”

Brienne almost gagged but Wylis, surprising her again, shook his head. “I don’t think so, my lord. The Evenstar comes from your wife’s line.”

“Kings and queens of Westeros were Targaryens until that usurper took over.”

“He was still a descendant of the Targaryens. My lord, I ask you not to make that impossible request, but ask her for one she would be willing to grant. Your name on official documents—laws, decrees, contracts. After all, you hold and lead Tarth. Not Lady Brienne.”

“Lyonel must carry my name. What’s the use of being my son?”

“Because he is the future Evenstar, he must carry the name of Tarth, my lord. But future sons and daughters of yours may carry your name, if the queen can be persuaded.”

Humfrey smiled at Brienne. She just stared back at him. “If you are right, my wife carries my next son. Finish your food, wife. Proceed to my chambers so the maester can examine you.”

*******

Despite Brienne’s insistence that any examination for pregnancy was unnecessary, she was ignored and forced to endure the maester’s wrinkled, oily hands on her body. The shift was a thin shield from hands that checked her breasts for any tell-tale swelling, her stomach. And when she had to lay on her back and spread her legs, she squeezed her eyes shut. In the temporary darkness of her mind, she flooded it with memories of picking up a tourney sword as a little girl and seeing Lyonel for the first time. She also saw herself on a powerful horse, galloping wildly on endless fields of green so vivid they shimmered like jewels under the golden sun. She was warm, and one with the wind and sun. She turned back to smile at someone but Wylis clearing his throat ended her reverie.

She raised herself up on her elbows and saw him scowling at her. It was enough. He knew what wasn’t there.

He left the chamber in a huff, eager to once again tell Humfrey of his wife’s failure. She sat up, covering her legs with the rest of the shift and got to her feet. Despite the thick carpets her bare feet were cold.

The sheets on the bed were turned down. Maids had been busy preparing Humfrey’s chambers, from the fireplace lit with gold and red flames, tables groaning under the weight of wine, more meats, fruits, and cheeses. She made a face, thinking of the meal she’d just had, how her husband had decimated food and drink they’d been served. This food waiting for another attack from him would be better appreciated and much more needed by the starving.

The double doors groaned and squeaked open shortly and Humfrey lumbered in. He was frowning and shaking his head at her. Brienne hugged herself, thinking she’d rather be blessed by rope and starve for days rather than have her husband touch her for a breath or two.

“There is no child.” His tone was accusing.

“My apologies.”

“Is that all you can say? If I haven’t seen you drink the tea myself, I would think you only pretend. Your failure to bleed robs me of heirs I have the right to. Heirs I was promised by marrying you.”

“What of Lyonel? Don’t you think he’s more than enough?”

“You of all people ought to know the importance of having a spare. But a true spare would be another son of your father’s, not a daughter.”

“Had I been born a man, my lord, surely you realize you wouldn’t be my husband. You wouldn’t be lord of the isle.”

“Lord of the isle.” Humfrey scoffed, sitting on the velvet bench at the foot of the bed. He bade her to come forward, pointing at his boots. “I rule the castle and this island, nothing more. It’s not I but you who sees the queen when summoned. You who signs on documents. What’s taking you so long?” He suddenly demanded for Brienne still stood by the fireplace.

“You’ve had quite a night. Wouldn’t rest be a smarter option for tonight?” She noticed his eyes were almost half-closed and he was slurring his words.

“It’s not your duty to tell me what’s smart or smarter. Remove my boots then off with that blasted shift. I mean to put my second son in you, Brienne, even if takes me the whole night.”

Maybe she should have gotten drunk during supper too. If she were unconscious then she wouldn’t feel his hands and mouth on her, and the stabs of his cock. As Humfrey fumbled with the ties of his coat and shirt, she poured herself wine and took a quick sip.

It was more potent than she was used to. One sip was a blast of fire in her throat, another a wave of conflagration burning through her nose, the backs of her eyes all the way through the top of her head. She knelt before Humfrey and pulled off the first boot. The force of her movements almost pulled him right from the bench and onto the floor, making him shout.

“The gods damn you, woman! Can’t you use your hands properly?”

“My apologies.” She muttered.

She pulled off the boots carefully, then his hose. His hairy legs felt sticky and clammy. She stood up, wiping her hands discreetly on the back of her shift. He glared at her.

“The shift. Do I have to tell you again?”

“I thought you might like wine. Or something to eat first.”

“You’re not here to think but to do what I say. The shift.” He snarled, his face red. “Now.”

“As you wish,” she murmured, making a small curtsy. “My lord husband.”

She loosened the ties of her shift, surprising herself with how calmly she did it despite the hate and anger threatening to choke her. Humfrey breathed loudly and shallowly, the sound not unlike the half-snorts of hogs in the middle of feasting slops. Unlooping the ties at last, she pulled at the neckline of her shift. Then she looked at Humfrey.

He was staring at her, still breathing unusually quickly. As the shift fell to the floor, he put a hand on his heart. She knew better than to think it was a gesture of passion. He most likely had discomfort from the rich meal and numerous goblets of wine. She raised one foot off the pile of linen at her feet, resigned to a long night of his slobbery kisses and greasy body.

Humfrey stared at her, his hand on his heart still. Suddenly, his eyes widened and he croaked, trying to reach her with his other hand. Brienne paused, puzzled as he moved in jerks and spurts, the hand on his heart tightening before he finally fell on the floor, gasping.

Brienne turned away, his heavy body narrowly missing crushing her feet as he fell with a thud.

The word was at the tip of her tongue. One word. One call. Yet she was frozen on the spot, staring in confusion as Humfrey made watery, sputtering sounds, clutching at his heart. Gurgling nonsense left his drooling mouth, his bare feet thumped weakly on the carpeted floor.

And all she could do was stare.

Humfrey gasped, tried to grab her by the leg. She moved away, watching as his eyes widened, the tip of his tongue thrusting from his open, wet mouth.

Then stillness.

Except for the drool sliding down the side of his face, Humfrey moved no more. She knelt, pushing his limp hand away from his chest to feel his heart. Nothing. To be sure, she put her ear close to it. Silence.

She held two fingers over his lips to feel his breath.

“Seven,” she whispered, slowly moving her hand away from him. She stared at the rest of him, finding not even the slight rise of his chest to indicate some breathing, a twitch that suggested life. Nothing. Her eyes went to the doors. She knew what must be done.

She also knew what she could do. In a castle where everyone down to the stable boy was loyal to Humfrey, she knew what might happen to her if she called for the guards right now.

“You pathetic excuse of a man,” she hissed at him. “You will not be missed.”

She had to act fast. Once the body cooled she would have harder work to do. She removed his coat and vest, his shirt, tossing them to the floor. At least she had removed his boots and hose already. She dragged his breeches off next, making a face as his limp cock swayed left, right, from the movements.

His pale, fat body was laid out like a rejected feast on the colorful carpets. She thought to smash his cock with the heel of her foot but refused to touch him more than necessary. Though he didn’t deserve it, she wouldn’t desecrate his body.

Grunting, cursing, she slipped her arms under his cool, hairy armpits and heaved him up. Years without sparring had softened her body. Dragging and putting him to bed drew sweat from her face all the way from between her thighs. More grunts and gasps spilled from her lips as she put him under the sheets.

Only when she stood back inspecting her work did she see his open eyes and mouth. She slapped his chin up none too gently and heard the crack of bone. Next she looked at his eyes. Green so pale they were almost gray. She pressed them closed.

The challenge now was staying long enough in his chambers for guards and servants to think nothing was amiss. She left his clothes on the floor, knowing that folding them neatly on a chair would be odd for a servant to find. She pulled her shift back on.

Midnight was the time Humfrey would send her back to her chambers and when a servant came in to prepare him a plate of food as well as drink. Brienne mussed her hair and pinched her cheeks to simulate being used.

Someone knocked on the door. “Enter,” she called out. A female servant came in, curtsying to her.

“Does my lady need assistance?” She asked.

“Thank you, but no. I’m afraid there’s a bit of a mess. Lord Humfrey sleeps soundly now and I would prefer you don’t risk disturbing him.”

“Oh. My lady, do you think it better to wait for sunrise for meal and drink be put together for him?”

“No, that won’t be necessary. I know he gets up sometimes during the night for a bite or two. Just make sure you don’t wake him while seeing to your task.”

“As you wish, my lady. Here,” the girl took her robe from a chair. “If I may?”

“Thank you.” Brienne turned away, bending her knees so the much shorter servant could put the heavy brocade robe properly on her. Then she went around to secure the ties in front.

“Your slippers, my lady.” She helped Brienne slide them back on. Brienne thanked her and she curtsied before heading for the table to assemble a plate.

Having served Humfrey in the manner she was doing now, she quickly put his preferred cheeses on a dish, then the meats. She poured rich, crimson-purple wine in a goblet. She brought them to his nightstand. Brienne held her breath, waiting for her to notice anything amiss.

Humfrey didn’t like having her walk back to her chambers alone, for the simple reason that he believed she would dither rather than go straight to bed as expected. Brienne just nodded when the girl asked if she was ready to leave.

Cold as it was due to the deepening hour of the night, Brienne felt light on her feet.

She arrived at her chambers with the bed already turned down. The girl helped her out of the robe then went to the table to pour her a glass of milk. It was warm.

“Will milady be needing anything else?”

“Nothing for now, thank you. You should get some rest. You have another early start.”

When she was finally left alone, Brienne couldn’t sleep. The right thing to do was to run to the sept, fall on her knees begging for forgiveness. But there was no guilt. Not even the slight niggling of shame.

Instead, she went to sit by the window. For the first time in so long she saw the moon and the stars. She shivered under her thin shift, nipples hardening. Her heart was singing. She stared at the dark sea of the isle barely illuminated by silver light. It seemed the rest of her was coming awake after a long slumber: in the crash and ebb of waves she heard music, the icy shaft of air the embrace of a lover. She closed her eyes briefly, intoxicated by the faint scent of ice and brine. When she opened them, a tear fell down her cheek. One tear. Not for her husband. For herself.

Because she was still alive. After everything she was still alive.

She slept so soundly that it seemed only a moment had passed from when her head fell to the pillow to being roused by the soft, hesitant voice of Dyrna. “Lady Brienne,” she whispered. “It is morning.”

She opened her eyes, blinking at her. Her eyes felt heavy, her eyelashes stuck together. Dyrna made a little gasp. “Milady. Did you not sleep well?”

“I—It was so cold I was tossing and turning,” she managed to say, rubbing her eyes. Seeing clearly now, she sat up.

Dyrna frowned then gave the other servant girls the eye. Brienne recognized that one of them was with her last night.

“Did you place a bed warmer in milady’s bed last night?” Dyrna asked her. The girl’s hand flying to her mouth indicated she hadn’t. As Dyrna hissed under her breath, Brienne held up her hand to stop further exchange.

“It matters not. But it is a lesson that will be remembered, will it not?” She said to the girl.

She looked contrite. “I am so sorry, milday. It will not happen again.”

One of the women approached with a cup of maidentea. Brienne hesitated. As she was about to sip, somebody pounded on the door. The women cried out and quickly formed a circle around her.

“Lady Brienne!” The panicked voice of a man shouted from behind the doors shuddering from his blows. “Lady Brienne, please! `Tis urgent!”

“You shall wait until milady is decent!” Dyrna exclaimed as Brienne broke past them to pull on her robe. As the others scrambled to close the laces for her, Dyrna went to look for her slippers.

“Come in,” Brienne said.

The door opened and a wide-eyed guard stumbled in. He quickly dropped on one knee. Two other guards followed him. All the women but Brienne looked puzzled but also terrified. And then Maester Wylis entered. He was still in his robe.

“Maester Wylis. What’s going on?”

He seemed to hesitate before kneeling “Lady Brienne, I apologize for being the bearer of bad news. Lord Humfrey was taken by the Stranger.”

As the women gasped, Brienne put a hand on her heart. “My-my husband?”

“Yes, Lady Brienne.”

“It can not be. He was. . .he was just with me. Last night. He was only sleeping when I left.”

“The Stranger took him sometime during the night, my lady. I am so sorry. All of Evenfall Hall join you in your grief.”

“I—I don’t know what to do next.” She really didn’t. Her genuine bafflement was read as confusion and despondency by all around her. “Must. . .he must lie in state, is that it? And his clothes. . .his clothes. . .”

“I will see to the arrangements, my lady.” Wylis said.

“Thank you. Please, you may rise. All of you.” Brienne said. She paced, thinking what to do next. Lyonel would have to be informed, by her own hand rather than a short note penned by Wylis. _All of Evenfall Hall join you in your grief._

“Does my lady have any request of me?” Wylis asked. “Any of us?”

“I wish to see my husband.” Because those were the words expected of her.

“I am sorry, but it would be better for you to see my lord when he is dressed and ready. You should see about doing the same for yourself. Do as she asks,” Wylis told the handmaidens and the guards. “Let’s not make the day even more difficult and painful than it already is.”

“I wish to write to my son. It must be I who tells him.”

“Of course. Indeed.”

Brienne nodded. “I can not think of anything more to ask of you right now, Maester Wylis.”

“That is not surprising, Lady Brienne. But should you wish to speak to me more, you need only to have me summoned. My apologies for you pain again.” He bowed as did everyone.

He left with the guards, leaving Brienne with the women. Dyrna, clutching her hands to her heart, asked, “Lady Brienne, what can we do for you?”

“Do I have the trust of each and everyone of you?” Brienne asked after a moment.

Everyone murmured yes. Brienne had no choice. She went to her desk and took parchment from the drawer, and a pot of ink and a quill. As the women waited while wringing their hands, Brienne scribbled two quick letters. She folded them then put a wax seal.

“Dryna, and you—” she summoned the girl that had been admonished. “Tell me your name.”

“Santi, my lady.” She said, curtsying.

“Dyrna and Santi, I charge you to deliver these letters. Each of you are to take a carriage and a horse—have one of the lads drive for you if you know not how.” She gave the first letter to Santi. “If you wish to make up for your mistake, you will bring this letter to Ser Goodwin. He keeps a room in a tavern near the docks. The name is The Singing Maiden.”

“Yes, my lady. I shall.” Santi reached out to take the letter but Brienne pulled her hand back. She gave her a look that told the girl she can see through her. Santi began to tremble.

“You can not fail me. If you do, do not come back here.”

“I will not fail you, my lady.”

“Good.” Brienne handed her the letter. She turned to Dyrna next, handing her the other letter. “This goes to my old maester, Orlyn. He lives right in the town.”

“The apothecary,” Dyrna said.

“Yes. You know him.”

“I do, my lady.”

“I will tell you the same thing. Fail me and never come back to Evenfall Hall.”

Dyrna nodded and held the letter to her heart. “I shall not disappoint you, my lady.”

“Leave at once. Tell no one of my orders.” As the women curtsied before heading for the door, Brienne turned to the remaining women. “You will speak to no one of the orders I have given. I will see it as betrayal and dismiss you from my service immediately. You will not receive any references either.”

“We swear to keep your confidence, my lady.” They murmured. Rather than curtsying, they threw themselves prostrated at her feet. Brienne swallowed, hating the bitter taste of power.

“Do you swear this before the old gods and new?”

She couldn’t see their shocked faces. For it was one thing to promise a confidence and another to swear invoking the gods.

“We swear, my lady.”

“You may rise.”

She refused the tea, insisting on water. Then she dismissed the women. They looked at her fearfully. It made Brienne sick. She knew what power could do but she was far from comfortable from wielding it. Power with a sword she understood. Power that brought fear made her sick.

Her bath was quick. When the women tried to return to assist her with dressing, she refused and ordered them to never come in unless called. Wrapped in a towel and shivering from the cold air, she pushed her heavy desk from its spot then knelt. She tucked her fingers under several floorboards.

She shook out breeches, riding boots and shirt stiff and smelling of dust. But the true treasure was what was under them. She bent again, reaching deeper into the hollow space. Then her fingers found it.

. She stared at the beautiful dagger in her hands. The hilt was the deep blue of her eyes, or as close a match as the smith could get. Across the guard was intricate, handcrafted design of suns and crescents in sapphires. Sobbing, she ran a finger up then down the blade, pressing the pad of her thumb on the tip lightly. It drew blood.

Her blood dripped down the blade. This was Starborn. The Valyrian steel heirloom of House Tarth. This was Starborn. The Valyrian heirloom blade of House Tarth. A gift passed down from fathers to sons and then her, the only living heir of Selwyn. She hugged it fiercely to her heart, burying her face in her dusty hand.

Not one nor two tears fell down her cheeks but a torrent—a storm. She wept at last from the abuse she had endured, wept in anger over her father’s choice of a man for her. Wept for a son that was too far away, for his own good but it still hurt. Each tear was a chain loosened from the prison of being Humfrey’s wife, but she also wept for what could have been. That what little of passion she’d had a long time ago, whether it was true or not, had been enough to make dream, even hope for it.

And she thought there was no hope for the likes of her.

She wiped her wet face on the towel then put Starborn at the foot of the bed. The breeches and shirt still fit her as they had the first time she had worn them. The high boots felt a little tight, for her legs were no longer firm and muscled.

She stayed in her chambers until noon, when someone knocked on her door. She stood up. “Enter.”

The double doors swung open. Dyrna and Santi stumbled in, shivering in their cloaks and shaky smiles on their pale lips. They didn’t have to tell her they were successful. Proof of it was right behind them.

Brienne’s eyes softened. “Good.”

Then she put on her cloak—a serviceable spread of the blue of the ocean just under the sun. At the center was the blazon of House Tarth, quartered rose with yellow suns, azure with crescent moons. It rippled on her back like the sea as she strode out of her chambers and toward the hallway. Guards who usually just looked away stood at attention for the first time, clearly not recognizing her at first until they realized it was their departed lord’s wife in men’s clothes. Brienne walked with her head high.

“Open the door,” she told the guard stationed outside of Humfrey’s chambers.

“Uh, but, ser—I mean, my lady,” he protested. “Maester Wylis has yet to finish preparing his lord.”

“He shall never finish. Open the door.” Brienne patted the dagger at her hip pointedly.

The youth muttered a prayer then obeyed. No sooner had Brienne and the two men with her had entered did Wylis turn to them in anger.

“What is the meaning of this! Lady Brienne, this is most improper—”

“Maester Wylis, you are relieved of further service to me, Evenfall Hall and the rest of Tarth. You shall pack your belongings and remove any trace of you within the castle and the isle.” Brienne flung a pouch of coins at his feet. “Your wages, for though you do not deserve one coin, I still intend to do as right by you as I can stomach it.”

“You have no right! You crazy woman, this is a mistake—”

“My old maester Orlyn will be taking over your duties. Any more quarrel with you shall have Ser Goodwin taking a blade to your throat. Do not mistake his age for being feeble.”

Wylis glared at the two men flanking her. She was still head and shoulders taller but he knew he was beaten. Glaring at her, he grabbed the pouch off the floor. Brienne stared at Humfrey’s nude body while listening to Wylis leaving. When she thought he was by the door, she turned and spoke.

“Maester Wylis.”

He turned, frowning at her.

“See to it you are never seen in Tarth before sundown. Otherwise I shall have you thrown to the cells and report your dubious practices to the Citadel. Every chain you have earned will be taken from you.”

He scoffed. “What do you know of dubious practices.”

“The maidentea you’ve been giving the Lady Brienne is nothing more than a mix of benign herbs and spices. My lady should charge you for the crime but she thought to still allow you to keep your life.” Maester Orlyn told him. “It will be a mistake to cross Ser Goodwin.”

“Sycophants. You will regret this day, you bitch,” Wylis snapped before storming away.

Listening to his fading foosteps, Brienne turned to her loyal maester and master-at-arms. “Do you think everyone in the castle loyal to my husband can be relieved of their duties before sundown?”

“My lady,” Ser Goodwin bowed gallantly. “Thy will be done.”

“All of them, ser,” Brienne said softly. “From the guards that dragged and bound me, to the stableboys that butchered my horse. I want them gone from Tarth. They keep their lives. That is all the favor I will grant them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES! HUMFREY IS D-E-A-D! 
> 
> Thank you to everyone for being patient regarding the updates. I had exams early in the month and before that, had to study. Not that anyone cares, but I'm happy to report that I passed. Keeping my fingers crossed that's the last language exam I take. Forever!


	7. Daenerys I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When Drogo poured golden crown on Viserys, I felt relief. I was glad when he screamed. I did nothing. He was my brother. The last of my blood. His agony was a song.”
> 
> “I have to believe, your grace, that relief and pleasure are two different animals. I have been at your side for a long time. You unleash armies on your enemies. But not violence. At least, not violence that is not uncalled for.”

CHAPTER SEVEN: Daenerys I

“As it goes in this part of our world, servants speak differently from their masters. The tone should always be respectful, but clear. However in Westeros, accents indicate your position in society. Some of you will find work with the queen or in her castle. Some will work in brothels for it is there that lords and some ladies loosen their tongues about the queen. You cannot, however, let it be known that you are not from Westeros.”

From the doorway of the sunny library, Daenerys Targaryen watched as Missandei gracefully took hold of the jaw of one of the women. “Repeat after me, thus. Watch how I do it. Milord. Milord. Not m’lord.”

Before Missandei or any of the women and men could notice, Daenerys moved swiftly down the hallway. She did not wish to distract them from study.

Unsullied were stationed against the walls she walked past. It did not use to be like this but due to events from the last two years, the lord commander of her Queensguard was even more vigilant in keeping her alive.

As she reached the end of the hall, she spied the tall, powerfully-built man himself. His hair was no longer silver but white as a cloud. His eyes, though a clear, warm blue were somber as they watched her. His gold and silver armor rivaled the brilliance of the sun streaming through the square windows. Even his white cloak gleamed.

“Ser Barristan,” she acknowledged. Once closer, she had to crane her neck up being that the top of her head just grazed his shoulder. His height and build made him the perfect shield. Though she had complained to him about the guards being an excess, she felt safer with him and the Unsullied. Much safer than being on any of her dragons.

_But I am blood of the dragon. The safest I should be is with them._

It should be behind her now but there were nights the screams ripping through the arena kept her awake, and when she managed to sleep saw once again the masked faces of the Sons of Harpy surrounding her. She had to remember that she was alive and back in her chambers in the pyramid, far from the bloodbath of that day and the terror of riding Drogon that first time. Had any of her ancestors felt fear the first time they saw the world far, far below their feet, shrunk into pieces so tiny mountains were indistinguishable from tree?

Was it wrong that despite the dragon blood in her veins her feet still preferred the assurance of marble floors or the dusty ground?

She continued walking and Ser Barristan was quick to match her short paces. “Has our guest been made comfortable?”

“He has been given all comfort and even respect possible, given the situation, your grace. He knows too.”

Suddenly, she stopped and turned to him. “Will you give me counsel, ser? I realize it is all I seem to ask of you since my return. I don’t wish to try your patience.”

“It is always an honor, your grace. I traveled far to serve and to undo the wrongs my support of the usurper has brought to your family. Counseling you is the least I can do.”

“Is it right to continue sending spies? I gave the people the choice to serve if they wished, to leave if not. But what if I’m unintentionally taking advantage of their gratitude?”

“Your grace, you gave them the choice. You said it yourself. There is no slave that would turn down freedom. If they chose to remain with you, it is because they believe in you.”

“But they are risking their lives.” Daenerys pointed out.

“Yes, your grace. Because they have seen you do the same. When the slavers attacked the city you made it clear that for every life they’ve taken you will take five of theirs. You did not do it with the Unsullied behind you. You did it atop your dragon, burning their ships and bringing peace and justice once more.”

“Peace and justice,” she murmured. “Fire and blood.”

“Fire to cleanse the land, your grace. Blood to be shed by those who have willfully committed abuse.”

Daenerys repeated his words in her head. Thinking of her duty. Of what she was born to do. _A Targaryen all alone in the world with naught of her blood to speak true with her._

“Do you trust him? Should he be trusted again?” She asked suddenly to change the subject.

It seemed death had suddenly snuffed out all lives in the hallway. Yet she could hear herself breathing, felt the warmth of her own palms crossed just above her stomach. She saw the steady beat of a pulse at the base of his lined throat.

“My mind wills me to say no. But my heart urges a different answer. Perhaps it is because I myself have taken part in a betrayal. This you know, your grace. Yet you continue to trust me in counsel as well as with your life.” Barristan paused.

“Yes.”

“Discomforting as it is for me that he and I might be in the same standing, it is perhaps that voice within you that calls to trust me, a man who had failed to protect your family, and might also be the voice that encourages you to at least listen to him.”

“I confess it is sentiment more than anything close to cunning that urges me to see him. But that sentiment is tainted now. He was a friend following Drogo’s death. He claims he was true to me by then but what if it’s another lie? Still,” she looked up at him, wishing for answer in his eyes. “He has fought to return to my service. Despite the threat of death.”

Barristan, a calming force that always kept the storm of his heritage concealed, failed in masking his displeasure. “Returned, indeed, your grace. And with baggage.”

She nodded. “I have yet to decide if that baggage should be kept or thrown to the sea. It’s a mercy compared to what was done to my family.”

“Perhaps he returned, your grace, because should you change your mind about trusting him, at least death would be swift. Sailors from Westeros are one in saying Cersei has too much liking for torture. In the end, we all die. All we can hope for is the Stranger is swift and merciful when the time comes.”

“Is it a taint of madness, ser? To have a liking for torture?”

When Barristan again did not answer right away, she continued, “When Drogo poured golden crown on Viserys, I felt relief. I was glad when he screamed. I did nothing. He was my brother. The last of my blood. His agony was a song.”

“I have to believe, your grace, that relief and pleasure are two different animals. I have been at your side for a long time. You unleash armies on your enemies. But not violence. At least, not violence that is not uncalled for.”

“Let’s hope you are right regarding the absence of the taint in me.” Daenerys said. “I am my father’s daughter but I am Daenerys Stormborn.”

She resumed walking and he once again fell in a step beside her.

“Our guests continue to provide the invaluable knowledge for when we seize what is mine by right,” she remarked. “And more often than not, verified by those we have trusted to see the truth for themselves.”

“Yet you still wish to see with your own eyes,” Barristan deduced.

“Yes. But I still will not trust them fully. Perhaps it will only be until the seven kingdoms are mine again.”

Something warmed in his eyes. “It might be wise, your grace.”

They continued for the lower chambers of the pyramid, where a row of cells sunk in darkness except for weak, flickering flames from torches in the hallway. Here the path narrowed to allow only two people abreast, but two people who were slim rather than thick and muscled. Despite the presence of younger soldiers, Barristan insisted on preceding Daenerys. He called on two Unsullied to follow behind her.

She waited for a guard to unlock the wooden door. She glanced at Barristan, who nodded at her. Shadows of the flickering fires fell on his face, reminding her of the wings of a dragon.

The guard moved to place a torch in the small chamber. Chains rattled and dragged as Daenerys entered the cell.

Her guest was already on his feet, the long chains on opposite walls giving him just enough mobility to move but never close enough to touch her, let alone for her to smell his breath. The dark, constricted space smelled of smoke, from the fires her dragons breathed below their feet, and unwashed flesh.

He stepped into the light. Daenerys stared up at Jorah Mormont. His black beard had gone gray and his weathered face now scrawled with more lines.

“Khaleesi,” he murmured, lowering his eyes to the floor.

“Ser Jorah,” she said. “How do you find your chains?”

He raised his eyes. They were a lot older than his face. “Befitting for what I’ve done. Should you add another link, you will find no argument from me.”

“Good. Because you don’t have the right to protest. You only still have your tongue because I wish it.”

Wisely, he remained silent.

“The spies I have sent across the sea to verify your claims have written me. A lot of your knowledge holds little value at the moment. For instance, the only son and heir of Jon Arryn seems to become better friends with the Stranger each day. Petyr Baelish, a son of some small, small lord, who was briefly married to his deceased mother, is now his guardian. What do you know of him?”

“Close to nothing, your grace.” Jorah tried walking around, going only a few steps because she chains limited him. “Baelish descended from a Braavosi sellsword. In his childhood he fostered with the Tullys, and had wished to marry Catelyn.”

“Catelyn Stark.”

“Yes. But she was betrothed to Brandon Stark until. . .until—” Jorah’s voice drifted off.

“I know what my father did to him.” Her tone was crisp. “And his father.”

“He was Robert’s Master of Coin. That is as far as my knowledge goes.”

Daenerys considered this. “Strangely, I don’t doubt you. But a man whose origins are at best obscure has somehow managed to become part of the usurper’s small council and even that of Joffrey’s. And now he controls the Vale in all but name.”

“He shouldn’t be trusted.”

“Like I shouldn’t trust you?”

Jorah looked at her. “I hope to earn it back, if I still can.”

“Indeed. _If_ you can.” Daenerys answered, meeting his eyes. “The seat of the Stormlands is no longer Storm’s End, but Tarth. Another new development that makes your knowledge insignificant.”

“The aftermath of wars changes borders and maps for always, khaleesi. From my travels—”

“Your travels,” she couldn’t help but mock. “How wonderful exile was for you.”

He shook his head slowly. “Exile was never what I wanted. I wished to remain at your side. I wished to love you.”

“What you know of me you used in the service of the usurper. A man for whom the many leagues between us was no difficulty for as long as I ended up dead. But I’m the one who still lives, not him. You had nothing to do with that. And you wish for me to let you remain at my side? To love you back?”

“What penance I must pay, it will be paid.”

“Good. Though your life for mine seems far from fair. You are not worth one of me, Ser Jorah. I’m certainly worth more one of you. Now, tell me about Tarth. Why would the seat of the Stormlands be there now?”

“The Battle of Blackwater took lives of nearly all forces on both sides—Stannis Baratheon, Tywin Lannister and his grandson, King Tommen are among the dead. But it was a decisive victory for House Lannister. One of Cersei’s first acts as queen was to burn the Baratheon stronghold of Storm’s End.”

“Bold of her,” Daenerys couldn’t help but remark. “Considering it is still whispered that spells and magic built and protected that castle. That her act could have incurred the wrath of forces you and I will probably never know the name of.”

“Spells and magic are only true for the smallfolk, khaleesi. Nothing, no magic, no fortification can be protected from fire.”

“You are right and wrong. Fire will always devastate, but only if there is no water to stop it. As for magic only being true to the smallfolk, perhaps. After all my brother and I had to sell all the jewels we had to keep from starving. How we wished for magic so we may have meat always. He was never the same when we had to sell our mother’s crown.” Viserys’ anger had not ebbed since that day. “Belief in magic, in spells, potions and prophecies may not be the reflection of a sound mind but for the first time in hundreds of years, there are dragons. Three, in fact.”

She looked at his chains. They gave a dull, rusty sheen under the crackling fire. “Have a care, Ser Jorah, in dismissing what the smallfolk believe. One of them has you in chains.”

“Khaleesi—” He tried to say but she cut him off.

“Tarth. Surely it now has some significance for Cersei to make it the seat of the Stormlands now?”

“It remains a minor House. The land is of little significance unless you have a greater fondness for fish rather than boar meat. You can cover the entire island on foot in all directions in a day. None of its waterways lead to King’s Landing.”

“But important to Cersei. You have not answered my question.”

“Because the answer is not clear to anyone. Other heirs of the Stormlands have survived but it could be because Lady Brienne of Tarth is the oldest among them and had already borne a child before the war ended. Khaleesi, the war wiped out heirs of major and minor houses. Robb Stark, for one, and the rest of the Starks believed to be dead. House Tyrell’s heirs are all dead. Barristan would have been head of his house had he not chosen the white cloak.””

“What else do you know of Lady Brienne?”

“Very little, unfortunately. I know she lost brothers and sisters in the cradle. That she trained as a warrior and fought in the war before getting married. It is believed that is one reason she got to keep her life. Cersei has not forgiven the houses that did not fight at the side of House Lannister. Another reason why the Lady Brienne remains alive is by the intervention of Jaime Lannister.”

“Cersei’s twin brother. And now her husband.”

“Yes, khaleesi.”

“Why do people think the kingslayer intervened on her behalf?”

“It is a mystery. But khaleesi, it is only a rumor. There is likely nothing to it.”

“Just as it was nothing to Robert Baratheon that I was alive and posed a possible threat to the Iron Throne. Taking back the Seven Kingdoms was Viserys’ dream, not mine. He sold me to the Dothraki in exchange for an army. Yet here I am. With armies my brother wouldn’t have believed even with his own eyes. There is always a truth behind rumors, Ser Jorah. Or at least, a way for some truth be formed because of the rumor. What you’ve said about Brienne and Tarth, is that all?”

“That is all I know, khaleesi. Tarth has never been an important player nor a strategic place for anything in the history of Westeros, khaleesi. It is nothing more but a source of good sailors. That can be said of anyone of anyone from the Stormlands. Warriors, perhaps, but the choices are limited.”

“Yet there is an unexpected warden of the Stormlands who just happens to be a warrior.”

“For now,” Jorah emphasized. “For now.”

“As the easternmost island do you not think it’s vulnerable to an invasion?”

“You will find nothing but salt and sand if I may be blunt. It’s called the Sapphire Isle for the blue of its water, not the jewels many believe it has. Should you decide to attack Tarth, all you’re likely to find is a woman who will surrender the island without you having to ask for it.”

“You find it a disadvantage.”

“Because there is little to gain from capturing Tarth, your grace.”

“Armies can never have enough warriors or sailors.” She smiled. “Or fish.”

She turned on her heel. Chains clanged behind her and she stopped. “Khaleesi.”

“That will be all, Ser Jorah.”

Daenerys left the cell and only looked back as the door was shut and locked. She exchanged a look with Barristan and looked down the hallway, towards where they had come from.

“Trusting him is one thing, your grace,” Barristan suddenly said. “But him—”

“Indeed,” she agreed. “Unlike Ser Jorah, this one has yet to be wrong.”

Short as the distance between Jorah’s cell and the next, it felt like an eternity before Daenerys was standing right in front of the door, guards awaiting her orders for the cell be unlocked. Finally, she nodded and stepped aside.

The lock and chains were removed. Slowly, the door was pushed open, and a guard entered first to place a torch.

Daenerys, who was about to step inside, suddenly stopped and looked behind her. “Ser Barristan.”

She didn’t have to say it. He went into the cell before her.

“Ser Barristan,” a strangely jovial voice slashed through the darkness. “What an honor.”

“I caution you to wait until given permission to speak.”

Daenerys followed Barristan. Unlike with Jorah whom she found easily with the aid of the torch, the flames flickering from behind her did little to show her other guest. But she heard the chains. The soft shuffle of feet—a sound so soft one would think it came from a child.

At last, the fires revealed him, first with the scars on his face grown dark from dirt and dried blood, the blunted tip of a nose, the mess of hair that seemed the silver of hers but truly more of white. Chains rattled as he moved closer.

And then he was standing right before her. A little man—nay, a dwarf given the big, heavy head atop shoulders as narrow as a child’s. The face could easily belong in a nightmare but only because of his strange, mismatched eyes.

“Your grace,” he said. Then he bowed so deeply she suspected his lips had touched the ground.

“Do you speak it truly? I’d rather be called the name you truly wish to say rather than a title you can’t bother to say with enough respect for me to at least consider believing you.”

He rose. One eye, green as a forest dappled in sunlight, and the other, a black void, scrutinized her. Looking for weaknesses. Waiting for a twitch that he could poke and expose. Daenerys gave him the same look.

“I mean no disrespect, your grace.”

She had to smile. “You almost fooled me.”

He glanced at Barristan then back at her. “Tired as you are of hearing this, I did come for you. To offer my services.”

She looked at him from head to toe. “Have you? What weapon do you fight with?”

“Your grace?”

“A dagger? A morningstar? A sword, perhaps? Or do you use your fists?”

“I’m afraid my strength is not with my body. As you can see. But I have read books. Many books. My size has made me the source of ridicule and shame my whole life—it’s one or the other on any given day. But while most men were born with the ease of being able to look at the horizon, being closer to the ground has taught me more truths.”

“Are you about to tell me you can divine using stones and weeds?”

“Even better, your grace. I know the difference between foolishness and wisdom.”

“Is it not something everyone has? Tell me, then, is it foolishness I’ve kept you alive or wisdom?”

“Neither. I should give a different answer, I suppose, because who knows if I will still keep my life when you leave this. . .this exceedingly fine accommodation you’ve given me.” Chains rattled as he swept his bound hands mockingly across the room. “I am grateful you’ve decided to keep my head on my shoulders longer, your grace. But it’s not wisdom.”

“His skill is in weaving circles with words, your grace,” Barristan spoke up, sounding exasperated. “It’s the debt paid when with the likes of him.”

“I find it strange to incur a debt when his family had stolen from mine so cruelly.” Daenerys stepped forward and the dwarf, as she had expected, stood his ground. “Your father had my brother’s children butchered. His monster raped and murdered my goodsister—”

“Your grace, they are only rumors—”

“Speak without my permission again and I’ll have Ser Barristan cut off your tongue. It shall be your supper.” She said, fire lapping at her words. “There’s always truth behind rumors, Tyrion Lannister. Why else would they persist?”

This time he made no attempt to retort. “Had Ned Stark not chanced upon your brother on the throne with my father still bleeding at his feet, would it also be a rumor he sank a sword in his back? If not for Stannis, would your brother and sister fucking and passing off their children as another man’s also be just another rumor?”

Walking around Tyrion, she whispered, “What if a rumor were to reach your sister? A rumor of you serving the dragon queen? It’s a fact she wants you dead. Even the bounty for your head has reached this corner of Essos. Should I keep you alive? Give her your head for the seven kingdoms? Unless there is a better reason to keep you alive.”

“You need me, your grace. You need my knowledge in recovering what you’ve lost.”

“I didn’t lose anything. They were taken. By your family.”

“Then I am in your debt. You can collect my life whenever you wish.”

“Is that a promise? Oathbreaking is in your blood. All that’s happened in Westeros in recent years can be written in Lannister blood.”

“I am a Lannister but I am not my father,” Tyrion suddenly blurted out. “I have nothing of my murderous, mad sister in me. I don’t—I don’t have my brother’s foolishness.” His voice cracked and he suddenly turned away from her. His loud, hurried breathing echoed in the cell.

“You have to give me a better answer than that.”

Still facing away from her, he answered, “I have been nothing but truthful. What have your spies told you? At what point do they think I lied?”

“I don’t believe you lie, unless forced to. But it would be a mistake to believe you as a man of honor.”

Daenerys waited for him to turn around but when he didn’t, she nodded at Barristan. She left the cell and two guards quickly entered.

“So, this is it,” she heard Tyrion speak. “Will I be splintered in half? Don’t you think it should be in quarters as I am already a half-man? Or is it by fire? ‘Tis my dream as a child to ride a dragon—”

“Rest assured I shall keep in mind your choices for death when the time comes,” Daenerys interrupted him, watching the guards loosen his chains. He rubbed his wrists, looking at her suspiciously. “For now, you and I will go over the information my spies have sent from across the sea. You have lived through a winter, Tyrion. You will advise me on where Westeros is most vulnerable at this time. And then. . .”

She thought he looked at her with admiration and despair. “Indeed. And then.”

She walked away, once again with Barristan at her side. But before turning at the corner of the hallway, Tyrion called out, “Your grace, would I be putting my life at further risk by requesting wine? It’s been a while.”

She walked until Tyrion’s voice grew faint. But instead of heading straight for the throne room, she went for the stairs. Stairs that would take her to the dragons. The footsteps behind her came into a halt, even Barristan’s.

“Your grace, I advise against this,” he told her.

“What use are my dragons if I don’t ride them? Storms can take ships, ser. Also mutinies. Dragons are all I truly have.”

He hesitated but in a moment, seemed to agree. Daenerys gathered her skirts to take the stairs but stopped. “Do you think it foolish I keep Tyrion alive? Or does he have better value as cooked meat for my dragons?”

“With Tywin’s death, House Lannister is not what it used to be, despite now being a royal house. Tywin held the House together out of sheer will. Cersei is queen but her father never wanted her on the Iron Throne. Jaime on the other hand. . .”

“He was Kingsguard. With you.”

“A privilege that should not have been given to him at so early an age. The Kingsguard, back when it was an honorable institution, was a calling. And for Jaime’s betrayal he should don black rather than being returned to the white. Now he’s married his sister.”

“Like Targaryens.”

“You don’t have the taint. You can trust me on that, your grace.”

“My father did not always have it either. Let’s hope you have not spoken too soon, Ser Barristan. The last thing madness needs is three fully-grown dragons.”

In the lowest pits of the pyramid she went, tailed by Unsullied. It took three men to lift the heavy bolts securing the heavy doors. Four more heaved and pushed against the other door from which the dragons would exit once away from their cell.

“Khaleesi.” One of the guards called her. They were waiting for her command.

“Ready spears and shields,” she said. Quickly, the guards got into a defensive position, poised to attack. Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest.

The doors opened with a groan. Daenerys stepped into the darkness.

_I can not be afraid. I should no longer be afraid._

Her feet stepped on several puddles. Sticky puddles. In the space was the stench of cooked flesh and dried blood. As she walked a few steps, she heard a sound akin to the squeak and strain of leather. She stepped on something hard and ridged.

She knew it was coming before bluish-gold fire burst from the side, revealing a few bits of rubies scattered at her feet. Rubies from the tunic of Hizdahr, the husband she did not mourn. As flashes of bluish-gold fire got more frequent, she glimpsed a head the size of three wheelhouses standing end to end. Thick, scales and ridges, some spikes covered the surface rather than gilded, elegant details.

More bluish fire burst from the sides, revealing another head. Bigger than the first. She stepped back, unaware of the movement until her hand felt the wall of scales she was pressed against. Then there was the strained, leathery sound again. As she felt the wash of breath hotter than the sun and smelling of blood, meat and smoke, she saw the burning red pits of Drogon’s eyes.

She was still as Drogon sniffed hair. His breath whipped her hair across her cheeks. The low growl emanating from him seemed a sound dragged from fiery pits of the earth, causing the ground under her to tremble slightly. As his snout brushed her shoulder, her heart began to slow from its frantic thump in her chest.

“This time, we go with your brothers,” she said. “But we will not go too far. Not yet.”

She nearly lost her footing, falling on a floor that she now realized was ankle-deep in blood when Drogon suddenly lowered his body. The entire pyramid shook. She had held on to something to prevent the fall—a spike low on the base of his back. Her hands felt for other spikes, climbing up a scaly slope. Then she pushed herself up. Threw her other leg over his wide back.

She almost had to lie on her stomach to be just about wrapped around Drogon. She held on the spikes in front of her. It was just like the first time, but without the blood spraying from all directions, the chaos unleashed by the Sons of the Harpy. Fear was not entirely gone but she was calm.

Breath flitted in and out of her lips slowly. Then she gave the command her Targaryen ancestor had given that led them to conquer the continent that became the Seven Kingdoms.

“Sōvēs.”

With a roar that must have shook all of Meereen, Drogon charged out of the cell and toward the massive door. The guards were barely able to leap out of the way. From behind, Rhaegal and Viserion roared as well. Daenerys feared blood would spill from her ears and buried her face in Drogon’s back, her grip tightening as the violent movements of his charging body threatened to overthrow her.

Screams greeted them. Then she felt it. The rush of air pushing at her hair, the wind sharp and cold as it swooshed at her bare arms. Daenerys finally raised her head and found the world once again shrunken into pieces so tiny she couldn’t tell mountain from man.

Just past the horizon was Westeros. _Mine. I shall take back what is mine._

Drogon flew over endless stretches of sand, gleaming like an infinite carpet of gold. He took her past the clouds, where the air was thinner and much, much cooler. Then just as suddenly, he was heading right back to earth, like an arrow falling in a straight line. Daenerys forced her eyes to remain open as her hair and the fabric of her clothes wrapped and billowed around her head.

The cluster of green became trees standing several spans apart. The brown blobs hills and mountains. The sand no longer shimmered. A scream began to claw at Daenerys’ throat but in the last minute, Drogon suddenly arced, heading for the sky once again. The spikes on his back tore at her breeches and gouged at the tender flesh of her inner thighs.

“Enough,” she roared in Valyrian, feeling her fingers about to slip. “Enough!”

Maybe Drogon understood her. Or he sensed the resurgence of fear. He straightened his body in the air, allowing her to finally sit upright. Viserion and Rhaegal flanked them.

They were not as high as before. Just a little above mountains. Squinting at jagged rock formations, Daenerys searched for a target, something for her children to rain their fire on.

Then she saw them.

With a press of her knee, she signaled by touch to Drogon to steer towards the column of four camels. Rhaegal and Viserion followed.

“Burn them,” she commanded. “Burn them all.”

With a roar that seemed to slice her ears and skull open, and cause trees and mountains to reel back, the three dragons unleashed thick columns of fire at the camels. The animals, never having sensed they were in danger, were crisp meat shot with red and ash right on where they stood. Daenerys smelled it too.

Her children landed hard on the sand, sending walls of sand up high. Daenerys slid off Drogon’s back, stepping aside as they hulked towards the still-burning carcasses.

Just before eating, Drogon turned to her and opened his mouth. This time Daenerys try shielding herself. Nor did she shudder when he exposed rows of black, dagger-sized teeth.

He was the first to roar, his brothers quick to follow suit. As the ground shook once again and sand flew, Daenerys thought that their cry was an invitation to war.

The cry of victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Including a POV chapter from Daenerys was not part of my original plan for the story. It was only supposed to be Jaime and Brienne, but I thought to include Cersei and then Daenerys and then. . .well, you get the picture. I'm very hesitant about her POV because she's not exactly a character I'm on board with. She IS a great character, I want to make that clear. But she kind of checks all the boxes in the hero's journey according to Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) so while I do root for her, a part of me hopes her arc won't be predictable. If that makes sense!
> 
> At the time this entire story begins, much has already happened, though differently. Joffrey was killed during the riots. Tywin and Tommen died during the Siege of Blackwater. The Lannisters won, the Starks are nowhere to be found. Jaime married Cersei. Brienne married Humfrey. While all this was happening, the bloodbath at the arena led by the Sons of Harpy happened, Daenerys was able to escape and has since returned and defeated all slavers. So the POV you've read is her life sometime following her return. That's why in earlier mentions of her by other characters in the story, they've been talking about the huge army she's amassed. Dany has been busy since her return! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	8. Cersei II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What is this woman to you, Jaime?”   
> “Someone who has always been willing to give her life for a leader she believes in. Undeserved as it may be.”   
> “You don’t think I deserve her service? Her life?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Racist character

The fires on torches and braziers crackled valiantly but winter was a determined, thickening blanket even within the walls of the Great Sept. Cersei’s breath was a white puff as it left her lips. The thickness of her crimson velvet cape and the fur trimming the edges just about protected her from the cold. Still it seeped through her heavy dress.

Cersei looked up at the tall, marble statues of the Seven. Their faces were as smooth and white as they were first carved, she thought, steadfast and unwavering through the many tumultuous reigns of various kings and some queens. Wars, famine, illnesses, even calm—they had seen and heard all.

This was a kinship she felt with them. She could count the number of times she had knelt before the Seven—the first when she had begged the Mother to wake up her own, beautiful golden mother, the last the night before Myrcella’s departure for Dorne. How she had beseeched them—yet again, her prayers had fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps her father was right. And a part of her, long ago, had known. Even before she had knelt before them a moon after wedding to Robert. When she begged the Maiden to make Robert love her.

They must hear her now, after all she had been through? After all those rejections? All but Jaime had cast her aside. The acceptance of this truth was as pleasant as harsh bristles on the soft skin of her throat. Digging and dragging like vicious little spikes.

If they were truly gods, they could unmake some madwoman’s prophecy?

 _A dynasty from the blood and ashes of war._ Jaime’s promise, and a duty she must fulfill to silence the whispers throughout the Seven Kingdom. _I am queen. I have lost. Bled. Yet my worth still rests on a womb where seed should quicken._ Her leather gloves squeaked like frightened little birds as she curled her hands into fists.

 _Three. Three for you._ The fires around the sept reminded her of Maggy’s filmy yellow eyes. Cersei found herself back in that smelly hut. It smelled of all kinds of dung and the floor was soft earth that pulled at the heels of her shoes, as if there were unseen hands slowly pulling her through it and into a vicious underworld.

Melara, dull but loyal, little hand wrapped around Cersei’s skirt, cowered behind her. Panting as if she had just run. But Cersei had been too furious to take more notice of her friend. Her moods swung from anger to resentment in those days, and in that hut, in her chest was this black fire threatening to consume her if she did not unleash it to the smug, yellow-eyed witch smirking at her from across a table laden with dried leaves, twigs and what looked to be animal bones.

Despite the vicious wave of temper, Cersei remembered her knees trembling under her dress. But she kept her pretty face stern, her emerald eyes burning with contempt and disgust with the half-bent woman.

“You will tell me my future or I shall have my father’s guards gouge out your eyes and chop off your tongue. And you will eat them.”

She was pleased as Maggy seemed to still. The yellow of her eyes paled, like pus. “Blood for the knowledge you seek, then,” she croaked.

Then with surprising strength and agility, Maggy’s long, insect-like arm darted across the table, an oily hand grabbing Cersei by the wrist. It didn’t enter the young girl’s mind to cry out because her temper had crossed over to murderous at the witch’s blatant disrespect. The blade slicing into the soft flesh of her thumb had Cersei’s other arm, raised to strike her, drop back to her side as if boneless.

Maggy’s wet gums and tongue wrapped around her thumb before shoving her away. Cersei wiped it on her dress, but blood continued to drip and streak on her dress and the muddy floor. A dazed, gleeful look washed over Maggy’s face but her eyes remained dead pus-colored rings. She smiled.

For the first time since entering the hut, Cersei shuddered. The witch had teeth but there were gaps. Some were edged yellow, others black.

“Three questions you can ask. You will not like the answers. It’s not too late to run.”

“When will I wed the prince?” Cersei demanded. It had been years since Tywin told her of their secret. Prince Rhaegar grew more beautiful and she ached to have his unusual, violet eyes to look at her with love. Longed for the sweet notes he strummed on his lute and the rich, soulful voice that sang songs be gifts he gave her for the rest of their lives.

Maggy’s chuckle sounded like the wet gurgles of an infant. “Never. You will wed the King.”

 _Much better._ “I will be queen of the Seven Kingdoms, then?”

A dark, lizard-like tongue darted from between Maggy’s lips. “Hmm. Yes. Queen you shall be. Oh, you will be.” Her yellow eyes gleamed. “Until there comes another.”

This had to be the part she was warned about. She misliked it.

“Younger. And more beautiful.” Maggy spoke it with relish. “She will cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”

“I will stop her. I will be queen so I will have guards, armies to crush her. Rhaegar will have her burned. My brother Jaime will never let anything happen to me.” He had never refused her. He loved her. “He will always protect me.”

Maggy smiled. “You still have a third. If you still wish to ask.”

“Children. How many children will the king and I have?”

“Six and ten for him. Three for you.” She counted with her fingers before returning her gaze to her. As Cersei tried to make sense of it, she continued, “Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”

 _Six and ten. Robert’s bastards. Three for me, with Jaime._ Maggy had not lied—she did not like the answers at all and liked them even less now. But the old witch had not been right either. Myrcella was still alive.

But Cersei needed a son. A son that could truly be called Lannister.

How easily she and Jaime had made bastards. When it was furtive and quick. Dangerous. Now that she could have his cock without fearing for their heads, his seed wouldn’t quicken in her. She edged closer to forty day by day, despite the long winter nights.

Cersei rose to her feet. Behind her, Ser Gregor and another of her Queensguard moved from their positions. Ser Gregor moved to walk in front of her, his huge form blocking shafts of light.

They were almost at the door when she heard someone approach. Cersei’s lips twitched into a smug smile seeing the High Septon’s ridiculous, crystal-encrusted robe sparkling from the sunlight.

“Your grace.” He tried to see her from behind Gregor. “I apologize for not being able to welcome you.”

“There’s no need to greet me. I would not wish to get in the way of spiritual matters that occupy you. How goes teaching the power of prayer to the young ladies? Are they still on their knees? Such sweet, humble things, eager to please from their knees.”

The High Septon had the audacity to look humbled and pleased at her inquiry. He still tried to see her through Gregor but she refused to move. Even with the shield of the big body, she could smell the sex off the old man.

“It is constant work, your grace. Work I shall never turn down. But. . .But I was hoping if I may have a word with you? I realize the proper thing to do is to request an audience but, well—” he was sheepish. “Seven blessings to me and you for gracing the sept with your presence.”

Tempering her irritation, Cersei stepped in front of Gregor. The High Septon bowed deeply. “Your grace.”

“Speak. There are other matters I must personally attend to.”

“Your grace, I, ah, I know ‘tis not your primary responsibility but because of hundreds of new arrivals from all over the continent, it’s. . .well, we have been struggling to feed them. And keep them warm.”

“And?”

Blinking, he asked, “Your grace?”

“I sense a question somewhere although it has yet to be asked.”

“Your grace—I—ah, given the difficulty we’ve been facing keeping the people Flea Bottom fed as well as new arrivals, I thought to ask, I mean, if your kind heart could indulge—”

“Do you mean to tell me _all_ of Flea Bottom is being fed despite not having done any work? Winter is a hardship for all of us. My guards work. My handmaidens work. The cooks in the Red Keep work. Is there no work at a blacksmith’s, or in a tavern?”

“The new arrivals are mostly farmers. Fishermen. Smiths require people of a certain skill, for one, and I’m afraid these jobs can only be performed by people of Essos. Some of the smiths call specifically for them. Not our own smallfolk. But-But we feed only the poorest of them, your grace. Those who truly can not in any way help themselves.”

“Yet from the way you speak it appears everyone in Flea Bottom faces the same incapacity.” Cersei wanted to strike the man for wasting her time. “Ask what you wish to ask of me.”

The High Septon sighed. “Your grace, it would be a great help if leftovers from the Red Keep could be given to the poor of Flea Bottom. Leftovers or perhaps some gold so we can buy fresh bread or make soup.”

Cersei almost scoffed. Of course the man knew nothing of the depleted treasury. Still she gave him a hard look. Robert, Joffrey, not even Tommen, had been addressed so directly as she had just been. Because she was a woman. Crown and seven kingdoms and she was still _only_ a woman.

“I don’t see any reason to refuse your request. All of the Seven Kingdoms is struggling. It seems we’re having another long winter. Still,” her eyes gleamed as inspiration struck her. “You must write to Ser Jaime.”

Let her soft-hearted brother deal with the problem, since he still refused to follow her order in banning the smallfolk from coming to King’s Landing to escape the famine spreading through the entire Seven Kingdoms. _Why couldn’t he see as she did?_ They used to be one in every way.

“Write your concerns so that he and I may discuss it and begin drafting a law that requires merchants and upwards of station to allot a portion of their food or gold to the poor.” She turned to go but the High Septon stopped her.

“Your grace, I apologize but there is also the matter of. . .there is also a sickness spreading in Flea Bottom too.” He looked helpless. “The dead bodies keep piling up. Men, women, children. Young and old. All seemingly healthy until—”

“This conversation has already gone longer than it should.” There was no reason to mask her impatience. “You have only a small group of folk to worry about but I have the entire kingdom to deal with.”

“I-I apologize, your grace—”

“Be quick, then.” But Cersei began to walk. She almost laughed as he hobbled after her, trying not to trip in his long dress and making sure the stupid crystals did not snag. “What sickness? What do you do with the dead?”

“We’ve had to burn them, your grace. We’ve had to burn them all. Three of the Seven Sisters have been taken ill with the same affliction as we speak.”

“That’s unfortunate. Expect Maester Qyburn before the end of the day.”

“Thank you, your grace.”

“Next time you wish more than a word with me, request an audience. If not, there is always a septon I can find more agreeable.”

The man audibly gasped and she swept past him, not waiting for his bow. Her face was stony and her eyes glinted with barely suppressed rage as she left the sept. Standing at the top of the stairs, she stared at the icy, white world winter had all but buried King’s Landing in.

Rooftops of brick and wood sagged under the mounds of snow. Absent was the bustle of activity, where sellers bragged about their wares and services being the best in all of Westeros ad beggars cried for alms. Winter had plunged the city into a stillness, as if the Stranger ruled rather than her.

The cold stabbed her like a thousand needles at once despite the cloak drawn tightly around her shoulders. Ser Gregor preceded her down the snow-choked steps. His armor squeaked from his movements.

Waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her Queensguard was the bearers of her litter. An elaborate, breathtaking piece of design, it was a roaring lion’s head painted in glittering gold and covered the entire roof. The rest of the body was a deep, crimson color. The slim but sturdy poles were the gold of the lion’s head. At their ends was a carved detail of golden lions standing on their hind legs.

A dusky, raven-haired young woman with large dark eyes curtsied as Cersei approached the litter. “Taena,” she acknowledged, pleased that someone of such beauty could be so modest. The woman was new to Cersei’s service though she and her husband Orton Merryweather had lived in King’s Landing for a while.

Though the seat of House Merryweather was in The Reach, the Merryweathers had left long before the War of the Five Kings. Cersei knew she should be suspicious but there were no more Tyrells to be loyal to. Besides, the Merryweathers were one of the few people in King’s Landing who accepted her reign without question and gave her the proper respect. On her coronation, they had sent her bolts of silk and Myrish lace.

Taena stood up and swept aside the heavy gold brocade curtain. Cersei smelled the faint note of cinnamon from her hair, her body. It was a welcome respite from the dank, desolate stink of winter. Taena offered her hand and Cersei took it as she entered the litter, where a thick, crimson velvet seat and interior covered in the same pattern as the curtain waited for her. Taena carefully spread a white fur blanket on Cersei’s lap.

The walk back to the Red Keep was a journey of crude vocabulary and various stenches. Various voices speaking in various languages drew her face into a frown. She peeked through a partition of the curtain and discovered no one even threw a curious glance at her litter. The few people around huddled in their threadbare cloaks.

The air smelled and tasted of ice, and the slight rot of what she assumed were sickly bodies left out in the streets to die. She raised her hand to brush a curl off her face and caught a whiff of Taena’s scent. 

When had winter never been miserable? Cersei preferred summers. Warm, wonderful golden sun. Casterly Rock was most beautiful in the summer. The gates shaped like a lion’s mouth that signified the power and savagery of House Lannister seemed, to her then-child’s eyes, more golden when bathed in the summer sun.

And there was no better warning against threat and rebellion to her House than the dead bodies of Reynes hanging at the gates of Lion’s Mouth. It had been the summer of her tenth year when House Reyne made the mistake of rebelling against her father. Tywin had been quick to crush all of the Reynes, from the oldest to the infant, from bannerman to scullery maid.

Cersei never knew the Reynes hanged at the gate. Every morning of that summer she woke up to the sight of their bodies, first bleeding with their entrails hanging out of crevices like tangled lumps of red thread, then their bodies bloating. The flesh caused the seams of clothes to loosen.

Slowly, very slowly, with the mighty sun pronouncing a never-ending sentence, the clothes began to disintegrate. Coats that were once fine silks became riddled with holes as worms ate through them to get flesh and organs. Shirts sloughed off next. Breeches. The stench of rotting bodies spread throughout the castle despite the open air.

Jaime did not have the stomach for it. She had laughed at his order for the maids to put thicker drapes on his windows to keep the stink out. Meanwhile, she feasted on sweet, sun-warmed peaches as the flesh began to fall off the dead, sticky juices dripping down her chin.

She should be master of death now. Or better yet its lord. Her mother. Robert. Joffrey. Tywin. Tommen. She _had_ been death. It was a thrill close to sex hearing Melara’s screams for help and mercy from the bottom of the well.

Back in the Red Keep, she had Qyburn summoned to her solar. Handmaidens relieved her of cloak and gloves. Soft hands removed the jewels from her ears and neck, her wrists and fingers. Her gown, too beautiful to be wasted within the walls of the Keep, was removed as well, and the fur-lined boots.

She was helped into an emerald day dress, with a rich silver trim and a collar encrusted with diamonds. Taena went behind her to pull at the laces of the dress.

Cersei held her breath and tightened her stomach, puzzled at how she must now hold it in. Taena was panting softly behind her, the sounds husky and her breath stirring the curls at her nape as she closed the ties. Shoes that matched the dress were put on her feet.

In the mirror she thought she looked as pleasing and desirable as ever. Emerald-and-pearl combs held her hair away from the face but let the rest of it cascade down her waist like ripples of gold. Winter had made her cheeks stiff but the skin was still smooth and mostly unlined. The dress never needed padding because her breasts were naturally full and still firm after three children. No one could tell either that she’d had a bit of struggle being laced in the dress because her waist still looked small.

A pot of hot spiced tea and platefuls of apple tarts, sticky, nutty squares of pecans, chestnuts and walnuts, honeycake waited for her at the table. What drew her eager gaze, however, was the pastry Taena was now slicing off a mound to put in a gold-enameled dish.

“I confess no treat has tasted so good ever since you introduced me to wintercake,” Cersei told as it was placed before her.

Taena smiled. “I feel the same, your grace. It’s the only good thing to come out of the failed deal my husband attempted in Norvos. There is indeed no more perfect a combination than pine nuts, ginger and cherries.”

“Cherries,” Cersei remarked. “I admit it has been more than two years since I’ve had any.”

“Cream with the wintercake, your grace?”

“Yes.”

Cersei watched slim, graceful little hands use a golden spoon to scoop cream from a bowl then crown the unusual sweet treat. She was hungry.

Before she had to ask, Taena poured milk in her tea. “Is there anything else I can do for you, your grace?”

“That will be all for now, Taena. I wish to be left alone.”

Taena did a curtsy so graceful that Cersei would have resented her if not for how pleasant a company she was. She waited until the solar was empty before sipping her tea.

Her cup was only half-full and the wintercake crumbs on the dish when someone knocked. “Come in.”

She remained seated as Qyburn’s rail-thin form passed through the doorway, the edges of his black and gray robes brushing the floor. He bowed. “Your grace.”

“Well? Which has sprouted, barley or wheat?”

Qyburn hesitated and then, “I am very sorry, your grace. But neither.”

 _Neither. Neither yet again._ Cersei looked away, hating the familiar prickling sensation behind her eyes that foretold tears. She stood up abruptly, her eyes on the white-crusted world below her feet. The sun was poor, barely a light breaking through the chokehold of gray clouds in the horizon.

“Your grace need not worry so much. A child shall come. The change is not yet upon you.” Qyburn cleared his throat as she clasped her hands. There was no one else to hold. “Not for many years.”

“We have been trying since the day we got married.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. “I still bleed. We-we do it often.” Sure at last tears won’t betray her, she finally looked at Qyburn. He was still standing by the table, looking like he hated himself. “There is nothing wrong with either of us.”

“That you still have moonblood is a good sign, your grace. However with Ser Jaime. . .” His voice trailed off.

“Yes?”

Another hesitation. “Your grace, I don’t wish to be. . .indelicate.”

“Say it. Tell me.”

“Has he had. . .has he had other children?” Qyburn quickly bowed his head. “Forgive me, your grace.”

Cersei wondered if Qyburn had dared to mock her. But there was nothing in his face to suggest it. _Joffrey. Myrcella. Tommen._ She couldn’t say their names, not even to this man she had come to trust with her life. Though unspoken, she felt a weak whimper in her throat, a little sound of protest in her choosing to deny the children were Jaime’s.

“No.” _Jaime wants only me._ “He’s never sired bastards. Unlike many Kingsguard before and after him, my brother took his vows seriously. He not only gave up lands and title but also flesh.”

“I’m sorry again for the inquiry, your grace. Now if I may. . .when I a student at the Citadel, I came across texts from Essos that studied. . .” Qyburn cleared his throat. “Sterility. Among men. The studies appear to be sound.” Hesitating again, he said, “It. . it’s possible that some men might have. . .unsuitable seed.”

“But—” _Joffrey Myrcella Tommen_. “But Jaime is virile.”

“There are ways to see, your grace. But I will need your permission if you need me to make sure.”

“Let me think about it.” She replied after a few moments of quiet. Forcing herself to smile, she continued, “I have another reason for summoning you. It appears there is an ongoing problem in Flea Bottom and a man of your inclination and intelligence seems to be the antidote. Please,” she gestured for him to sit.

As she had expected, Qyburn’s face lit up when she shared what the High Septon told her. His reaction pleased her so much she offered him tea, and it pleased her even more when he didn’t refuse. Watching him tip the delicate cup to his thin lips, she said, “One can never learn enough about what destroys and ultimately kills a man.”

“Indeed, your grace.”

“How goes your study in that area, Qyburn?”

“Ah. Your grace, there is new knowledge everyday. Ser Gregor is testament to the result of going above and beyond the limits of known cures and healing to keep life. But the subjects you have sent my way have been more than invaluable in yielding their secrets.” Looking pleased, he added, “It’s unfortunate the Citadel will never agree to my methods.”

“Their loss. Perhaps you will unlock the secret to eternal life, Qyburn. As you will unlock the solution to the problem at Flea Bottom.”

“It is a challenge that is definitely more than worthwhile, your grace. Thank you for your faith in my abilities.”

“Now for other ongoing matters. What have your little birds found out about Daenerys?”

“She has managed to curtail the unrest in her region of Essos, which has resulted in her outlawing slavery. I’m afraid the rumors of her intention to invade Westeros remain persistent, your grace.”

“Perhaps winter is the shield we can use against her.”

Qyburn nodded. “One need not much experience in battle to know the foolishness of launching an attack in winter. There is more, your grace. But it’s still unsubstantiated. Right now we can say they are mere trills.”

“Daenerys still?”

“Your grace, it’s rumored that she has been sending spies into Westeros.”

Cersei did not like this at all. Recalling what the high septon had shared, she demanded, “You must see right away if there’s truth to it. Perhaps we should ban all ships from Essos.”

“It would be too impulsive an action, your grace. We’ve had to rely from their few ships that manage through stormy winter seas for most of our food and supplies.”

“It’s unacceptable.”

“I will have my little birds work even harder. As I said, your grace, they are only rumors right now. Rest assured I will get to the bottom of this.”

“Very good. Any word about her dragons?”

“She has little control over them. Before locking them up, the dragons have burned farms. Livestock. Children.”

“Hardly surprising, given her lineage.”

After the meeting, she had Jaime summoned next. He did not keep her waiting long.

Winter had made his blond curls look more golden, and his cheekbones and jaw sharper. But there was no playfulness in his eyes, rather an odd somber light. He looked more imposing. Dangerous, even. As he approached, he stepped into the light and that was when she saw it: the faint cracks on his leather coat, the loosened stitches at the cuffs and collar.

“What is that you wear?” She demanded. “It’s falling apart.”

“But not yet rags, your grace.”

She did not like his flippancy. “Is there a royal decree I’ve forgotten about? That royalty must present themselves looking like smallfolk?”

“A new coat and anything that will not fill the stomach is a foolish purchase at this time. And with the treasury all but depleted, we have to make the gold last for as long as it can. Surely you did not summon me here to compare sartorial tastes in wintertime?”

“I am your sister. Your wife. The Queen. It’s your duty to look your best when standing before me.” She frowned at the fur on his face. “You need a shave.”

“This is _my_ best. Tailors and seamstresses have done what they could to salvage my other clothes but they are, as you have said, falling apart.” Before Cersei could express more of her anger, Jaime strolled towards the long table unoccupied by plates of food and tea. Cersei shot to her feet, appalled by his rudeness.

Jaime unrolled the parchment and spread it on the table. “We have more pressing matters to discuss. You might wish to call for a small council meeting.”

“Whatever for? I just saw Qyburn to discuss an important matter and Gyles Rosby has been taken ill. There’s no point to a meeting if I have to repeat myself just because someone couldn’t be there.” If it wasn’t the High Septon imposing on her, Jaime kept telling her how to be queen.

“Rosby can come in a fucking litter. We’ll hold the meeting at his bedside if we must.”

“And what about me? Queens do not go anywhere for anyone unless they wish it. _I_ don’t wish it.”

Jaime sighed. “Very well.”

When she refused to move, he pulled out a chair from the long table. “Cersei, please.”

She went to him and sat on the chair. He pushed the parchment in her direction. “A letter from Brienne Tarth. She’s noted the increased presence of ships from Essos despite the limited imports because of piracy and winter. Besides the few merchant ships, the rest don’t dock in Tarth or approach any closer.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

“They’re spying. We have been warned about the armies Daenerys has been raising and how her dragons continue to grow.”

“Even if it’s true, how do you propose we find them? Are we going to torture every merchant from Essos?” She looked disdainfully at his clothes. “We might as well. You’ve clearly given up any attempt to look presentable. What would the bitch’s spies tell her? We’re in for a long winter. She will not attack,” she declared. “Those ships that Tarth cow has seen are just that. Ships.”

“Some of the ships have black sails with the sigil of a three-headed red dragon.”

Cersei looked at him for a tell-tale sign of this cruel jest. When he continued to look back at her gravely, she snatched the parchment.

_“. . .guards and myself have observed ships for a fortnight that know to distance themselves enough from Tarth that they can not be seen without the aid of an eyepiece. Even then most ships are only identified as such but some, when close enough, are revealed to have black sails with a red three-headed dragon._

_Though it is a violation of the peace terms, I implore to be allowed to begin arming and training soldiers of Tarth and to call other houses in the Stormlands to do the same so we may protect realm and Crown. I plea that we be given the privilege to protect the Seven Kingdoms in the name of Queen Cersei. . .”_

Cersei lowered the parchment. Jaime remained standing.

“She will never set foot in King’s Landing. Her dragons will find death here.”

“Not if you do as Brienne asks.”

“Brienne?” Her ears perked up at his familiar address of the ugly wretch. Jaime seemed to catch himself and he looked away. “What is this woman to you, Jaime?”

“Someone who has always been willing to give her life for a leader she believes in. Undeserved as it may be.” He glanced at her and took the parchment away but she put her hand on it.

“You don’t think I deserve her service? Her life?”

“If you continue with the foolishness of equating arming the Stormlands to treason, yes. You don’t. You seem to forget that in moving the seat of the Stormlands to Tarth, you’ve put it at the easternmost point of the continent. Tarth has less than five hundred men that can wield a sword. Evenfall Hall has no fortifications to protect it from any siege. What do you think Daenerys would do once she captures it?”

“You sound very sure. You haven’t answered my question. What is the woman to you? I ask because out of all the lords sworn to me, she is the only one you fight for.” Cersei kept her tone soft and sweet, as if promising lusty dreams coming true only with her. “You were silent when I had Edmure Tully remain imprisoned after the wars. The man has never raised even cutlery against our House. You were silent when I had Randyll Tarly’s thirteen-year-old daughter marry Black Walder. But with matters concerning Tarth or the cow herself. . .” She grinned, knowing just how to anger him some more. She was not wrong.

“I would say, Jaime, that you protest with more desperation than a maiden surrounded by rapers.”

“I stand before you today, alive and married to you because of Brienne,” His nostrils flared. “The woman you insult is worth more than your entire Queensguard and every knight in the Keep, including me.”

Trying not to bristle that he clearly upheld another, she said it again: “What is she to you, Jaime?”

“My protector,” he snarled.

“Now why should I thank the woman who captured my brother in battle?” At his startled look, she smiled very, very slowly. “I do know things.”

For a moment, she thought Jaime was going to kill her. His fist showed knuckles so white, whiter than snow. Just when she thought she’d gone too far, he drawled, “Do you, really? Then you know the right thing to do.” He tapped the parchment. “Let her do what she must. And call on the other houses to start building ships.”

“You know everything, don’t you? Everything except giving me a child. An heir. Where’s the dynasty you swore to me?”

The confusion on his face called for wine splashed on it. “We have Myrcella.”

“Don’t be a fool. You know you can’t acknowledge her as yours. What do you think the Martells will do when they find out she’s a bastard?”

“The Dornish are a lot more accepting of children born out of wedlock than us. We should look into it.” Jaime picked up the parchment. “I need your word. You know it’s the right thing to do. Let Tarth do what must be done for the good of the Seven Kingdoms. Call on the lords to start preparing—”

“When will you realize that your sister, your wife, is the Queen and you’re nothing more than her husband?”

“I have never overstepped—”

“You do. Always.” Cersei snatched the parchment from him and tore it. She smirked at his fury before startling him by pounding her little fist on the table. “Westeros is mine. No one is taking it from me. Be it that whore with overgrown lizards or you.”

“I have never wanted the Seven Kingdoms!” Jaime suddenly roared. A vein throbbed in the middle of his forehead as he looked at her with outrage, defiance and hurt.

Cersei didn’t realize she had flung a hand protectively over herself, remembering the many times Robert had struck her. As she lowered it, Jaime let out a ragged breath.

“You see enemies in every shadow and every creak and squeak you hear. _I_ am not your enemy, Cersei. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want you. There is nothing I wouldn’t do until you and I are all that’s left of this world. Believe that.”

He looked at the torn parchment. “You’re making a mistake in refusing her request.”

“She should have written to me. Not you.”

“This is what it’s all about? Of course she would write to me. Unlike the sycophants that fawn all over you, this woman has done the right thing in addressing her concerns to me first instead of going to directly to you. She’s probably the only one besides me who wishes to protect the crown you’d sew on your head if you could.”

He turned to leave. Cersei stopped him with a hand on his wrist and another soft and caressing his jaw. Eyes beautiful as hers, tipped with long, curling golden eyelashes looked at her.

“No,” he whispered, head turning to the side when she tried to kiss him. Cersei pressed him against the table, her heart racing at the knowledge how he could easily throw her off and he wasn’t. She kissed the pulse under his jaw and once again tried to take his lips.

“Cersei—” he sighed as her teeth raked his slender lower lip. Licked it. Then she took his face in both hands and kissed him. He kissed her back for a breath before grabbing at her hands. “No—”

When he tried moving past her again, she palmed the hardness between his legs. He gasped and she kissed him again, firming her hold on his cock while grabbing his hair with the other. A crisp, crackling sound rose over the wet sounds of mouth and tongue in a passionate clash for dominance.

 _The letter_. Cersei felt Jaime’s hands on her body, catching her around the waist, cupping her breasts. She bit him and gripped his hands, marshaling all her strength to push them away from her body.

He was flushed like her, but with blood beading his lip. She licked it, closing her eyes from the pleasure of the brief wash of wet metal and salt on her tongue. Opening her eyes, she found him staring back at her. A man who wanted her. A man who would never get enough of her.

She pushed at his hands until the fingers curled over the edge of the table. Another crackle. He turned to see and she caught him swiftly by the jaw. Claimed his mouth again. Licked his lips before pulling away.

He remained pressed and clinging the table as she pushed his coat out of the way and unlaced his breeches. They were worn too, threadbare in some areas. The laces were frayed. She kept her eyes on Jaime as she followed the fall of the breeches to his boots.

He was hard. A beautiful pillar of hard pink rising from a beautiful golden cluster.

“Look at nothing else but me,” she whispered, hands skimming his long, firm thighs “Your queen commands you.”

Then she delved past the golden curls to squeeze his heavy balls. Stroked his cock with the other. Leaned in and opened her mouth.

Jaime breathed harshly. “As you wish.”

Cersei paused. Licked her upper lip, teasing him with the pink thrust of her tongue.

_“Your grace.”_

Indeed. What were titles and lands to the grace of a queen’s mouth?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The "wheat and barley"conversation Cersei and Qyburn have refer to a urine-based test for detecting pregnancy that's traced as far back as ancient Egypt. Here's the link if you wish to read more about it and other methods:   
> https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/48655/8-historical-methods-detecting-pregnancy
> 
> 2\. The Reyne Rebellion actually took place in 261 AC yet in the show, Cersei mentions a summer where she sees their bodies hanging. This is a show-only invention. Cersei and Jaime were born in 266: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Reyne-Tarbeck_revolt


	9. Brienne IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know nothing of the cruel japes I’ve heard all my life. You know nothing about the shame I feel of being the only one among your children to survive. I wish I’d been the one to drown that day. I so wish that.”

Silver waves crashed into the shore, spilling on the sand. The pale sand was as smooth as concrete, maybe even glass. And then a pair of boots ran on it, leaving grooves. A bigger pair followed in the next breath, digging bigger hollows.

The roar of a winter ocean was a whisper in the clash and clang of steel. Brienne grunted as she swung her sword, scraping it so across the other blade that golden sparks trailed after it. She turned but remained on the same spot. Ser Goodwin came at her and she sliced high into the air, delivering a mighty blow that knocked the sword off his hands. Before the old knight realized what had happened, she kicked him right on the chest.

“You have most of your old strength back,” he praised, laughing as the water wet his silver-gray hair and clothes. Brienne, blushing from pleasure and exertion, gave him a hand. Old as the master-of-arms was, he was still light on his feet and quick to move. He picked up his sword without strain.

“Do I?” The salt of the air was sharper, and now edged with ice. It felt like breathing needles into her lungs. Brienne glanced at her sword then him. She was panting a little. “I don’t last as long as I used to. Too quick still to tire.”

“You’ve been years without a sword, my lady. And if you’ll forgive me, quite malnourished too until the last three moons.”

Thoughhe meant nothing by it, Brienne still felt a strange warmth creep up her neck despite the thick layers of clothes.

When Humfrey got rid of all servants and guards that had been in the service to the Tarths for generations, Brienne thought that was all the scandal people would know of her husband. It had not entered her mind that loyal as the men and women Humfrey had replaced them with, many still had loose tongues. She had gone to great pains for Lyonel to never find out about Humfrey’s abuse but now, it seemed he would.

A visit to Ashemark was called for, and soon. Because winter harshened each passing day, she had advised her son to remain where he was rather than risking a journey for his father’s funeral. She refused to endanger her only son and heir for the most worthless and pathetic of men.

With Ser Goodwin and Maester Orlyn back in her service, they were quick to take charge of her health. Orlyn waved away her protests and questions regarding food for the people as she was fed meat ringed deliciously with fat, fish with the most succulent white meat, fluffy breads with a fine crust, fruits and milk. A lot of milk.

Ser Goodwin’s progress with regaining her old strength and muscles, however, took time. As Brienne had feared, being without the sword for so long meant memories she thought imprinted in her body had vanished. She had softened too, from pregnancy and a significant lack of activity. Hells, even the sword had felt heavy the first time she wielded it.

She bemoaned about having to start all over again. After years of practice and hitting the target with a dagger from as far as thirty feet, not only was her aim off but her arm had lost the coordination too. Her first few tries had resulted in a horse getting stabbed in the thigh, a maid pinned to the tree by her sleeve. It was the same with archery. Orlyn had the unfortunate luck of needing an arrow yanked from his leg.

“My lady.”Goodwin raised his sword. “Again.”

They sparred for another hour, with Brienne relieving him of his sword three times. But Goodwin had landed a hard punch on her jaw that sent her sprawling on her back. His victory was short-lived because she retaliated with fists and kicks and sent him flying towards the water.

“I apologize, ser.” Brienne pulled him out of the water. His nose was bleeding. “That was uncalled for.”

Goodwin shook his head. “Not at all, my lady. It just caught me by surprise.”

“I remember your lesson in relying on my body and strength to fight should I be without a weapon.”

“Good.” He wiped the cuff of his dripping sleeve on his nose. “A decent blow, my lady. But I expect more from you.”

She laughed. “I’ll do my best to not disappoint you next time.”

With sparring done for the day, they got on their horses and rode for Evenfall Hall. Brienne was glad to have her feet off the ground. With the horse galloping across the sand and splashing sea water, the swift, rough winds felt almost like a caress.

She and Ser Goodwin sparred at first light every day, for three hours, before she rode to town with two guards to inspect goods, observe trade, and check on the general well-being of people. Tarth situated towards the southeast, they’ve managed to avoid the brunt of winter compared to the rest of Westeros.

Still, food supply and trade had been affected. Because waters going into King’s Landing were often frozen, the few merchants in the island restricted their trade to Dorne and some regions of Essos—the latter still quite risky due to the choppy water and rough winds that threatened to smash ships. Fish was also limited too, as a result.

Humfrey had done next to nothing in keeping stores for the winter. Tarth had little choice but to depend on the region of Essos for grain, fruit and also meat—sold at exorbitant prices. The treasury, already struggling because of continued reparations to the crown, was just gasps away from death due to expenses for food. Brienne, along with Ser Goodwin and Maester Orlyn, made the decision to begin selling some of her jewels. This was a challenge too because it meant travel as well as the risk of losing the precious cargo to the wild sea, pirates, and other causes.

The rest of Brienne’s day was spent hearing concerns and disputes in Evenfall Hall. Afterwards she observed the training of guards and soldiers.

Because her letter to the Queen seemed to have been lost or she, hoped, have led to serious, though overlong discussion, Brienne decided she couldn’t wait for the permission—or refusal.

Maester Orlyn had somehow found a way around the terms of peace without risking treason.  Cersei had forbidden weapons and other arms, but not fists. They couldn’t dip into the treasury to build ships because food was a lot more important. Thus, the training of every able-bodied man and woman in Tarth had in mind an invasion by  Daenerys . Using their experiences from the war, Brienne and Ser Goodwin taught combat by hand as well as sly, underhanded tactics in retaliating against an enemy.

Brienne kept her observations brief and to the point, because before the day ended, she had another two-hour sparring with Ser Goodwin, this time on the beach. It wasn’t ideal but necessary—there was a huge difference in fighting with sand under your boots instead of soil or paved surface, and the harsh conditions of the season helped in improving her strength and endurance.

“You go on ahead,” she told Ser Goodwin as they approached a fork that led further into the beach or towards Evenfall Hall.

“Take care, my lady.” Then with a swift kick of the horse to the ribs, Ser Goodwin was off towards the castle.

Brienne took the path leading into the beach, to a small, secluded cove.

Having been forbidden by her husband to leave Evenfall Hall when he held power, Brienne now spent as much time as possible outside. She had not realized the difference between drafty air in the castle and air outside until she had stepped out for the first time shortly following his death.

The number of times Brienne had wept were few. Overwhelmed by the fresh, unenclosed air, at the freedom that lay before at last, she had cried big tears and let out loud, heaving sobs.

Once at the cove, she climbed off the horse and steered the animal to a tree. The beast was a rich, dark brown color, with soft dark eyes that reminded her of a child’s, somewhat. Sighing, she rested her head against him, missing the horse her father had given her on her fifteenth nameday.

She had named him Storm, because he was spirited and bucked off all riders except her. She had taken him with her into battle after battle during the war, and they were still together when she married Humfrey. For a while.

Until he demanded another heir from her. When moon upon moon found her with neither blood wetting her thighs that signaled she could bear children again, or how her stomach remained flat, he faulted her horse-riding for her failure. Her protests had her thrown in her chambers again, bound. Gagged. Her screams were drowned out by the squeals and ear-splitting cries of Storm as he was butchered to death.

Her only solace was Lyonel had left by the. She pulled out an apple from her pocket, smiling as the horse sniffed it before taking it in his mouth. “Courage,” she murmured, drawing his eyes on her as he chewed. She hugged him around the neck. “That’s all.”

She gave him another apple. As he finished it, she looped the reins securely around a tree branch. She patted him on the head, took the small skin of wine from a saddle pack then went to the cove.

She grimaced while unbuckling her breastplate. Despite the thick padding of quilted leather coat over her shirt to protect against the cold that might freeze the armor on her, she was still in great pain. Sparring should have her wearing a complete suit of armor but it had frozen on her arms and legs a few times. They limited her movements too.

She put the armor up on a rock and took off the rest of her clothes. The wind was a repeated lash on her back, her breasts, and she was shivering before her breeches, hose and boots were off. The sky was gray now, hinting at another early evening.

Naked, Brienne left her armor and clothes and walked to the sea. Her breath alternated between ragged puffs and gasps laced with cries as she waded into the water. The cold flayed her. Yet she walked on and on, until the water lapped at her hips. Taking a deep breath, she plunged in.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream as she was pulled in but she was strong. Strong and determined. She resurfaced, long arms slicing into the waves, muscular legs kicking powerfully. Her skin paled to moonlight until it seemed almost translucent. Droplets around her body turned into ice.

_ One and twenty. . .two and twenty.. .three and twenty. . . _ When she reached thirty, she swam back to shore. Her body was not only beginning to stiffen. She was turning into a pillar of ice.

Once on the shore, she put her shirt and coat back on, jogging in place to replace the warmth lost. _Seven._ The water hanging off her eyelashes felt like ice and stung.

Fish was hard to catch at this time, but not clams. She breathed into her cupped hands to fight the cold intent on freezing and fusing her fingers together. Then she knelt on the sand, digging deep pits. Mollusk after mollusk was retrieved and a light laugh but of pure joy burst out despite her shaky breath and trembling lips.

All in all she had caught ten clams, their shells nearly the size of her palm. Brienne started a fire, pulled the wineskin closer and sat on a rock. Night had fallen. Starless. Black. She wondered if the fire was the only light to be seen for many leagues.

_ Lyonel should know this, _ she thought while prying a shell open with a knife. She was quick to slurp its contents, closing her eyes as sweet, cool brine filled her mouth, then the smooth, satiny meat of the clam.

Not a day went by without that pain in her heart. Letters between her and her son were plentiful but she longed to hold him in her arms. Smell his hair. How tall was he now? How many cuts had his hands collected from learning to fight with a sword? Was the blond of his hair pale or bright, and his eyes? Did they shine with mischief or were they gentle, soft? And his reading. . .did letters still seem to jump and switch place. _If he were here—_

If he were here, she would—

Brienne took a deep breath.

The tears were coming again.

She let them fall.

If he were with her, she’d teach him to fight herself. Maybe like her, he would struggle with footwork too, because of his long legs and big feet. The pommel of his sword would often be slick with blood, as expected. But she would kiss his cuts. Urge him to do better tomorrow.

Maybe he would be a natural with the sword too. Brienne pried another shell open, taking a moment to inspect the succulent, pink-white flesh in the fire. Then she poured it in her mouth, juices spilling on her chin and down her long throat.

She helped herself to wine after three more servings of clams. It would be easier to lessen thoughts and dreams of what might have been. She was no longer that innocent girl of seventeen who had sworn her life to a king all because he had protected her from cruel japes as a girl. Now she knew better to throw everything away just for love.

Love may be enduring. She would not fault the songs that. _But it was not everything._

How different she had been at seventeen. With love she had followed Renly’s foolishness in proclaiming himself as king. With desire she had fought for a place in his Rainbowguard, ignoring all insults and mockery rained on her. Renly was all that mattered.

Beautiful Renly. Hair as black as night, and eyes of a blue so deep they could be mistaken for black pools. She was a head taller but not once did he shame her for it. In fact he had smiled when she bent so he may fasten the vivid blue cloak about her shoulders when he named her to his Kingsguard. _Brienne the Blue._

Renly was the only light of her days. A light that faltered, not by her choice but circumstance. Because he was her king, and she sworn to him, sworn to him in the only way she could be, she’d had to live with the hurt of seeing Margaery at his arm. Pretty Margaery with her little smiles that pulled men to their feet, hand on heart before all but kissing the ground she seemed to float on. Margaery with the sweet, lilting voice made for song. Margaery, Renly’s wife. His queen.

The pain of having her heart broken was not torture enough. While she had unseated every knight in the Rainbowguard, driven them and every other soldier to yield like whimpering puppies abandoned by mothers as they lay bruised and bleeding on the ground, itwasn’t enough. She was still only a woman. Her cloak should have commanded respect. Men looking at her as their equal. She was more than the strength of any three combined. Taller too. Much taller.

These were just few of the many reasons they loathed her. Loathed her so much that when need arose for a healer who could stay with the Kingslayer through the night, her name was on every pair of lips curled in a sneer.

“I know nothing about treating injuries, let alone keeping anyone from dying,” she had protested. Her outrage at being relegated to work deigned for a woman who yielded needle, thread and herbs instead of sword overshadowed the realization that this was the first time she had spoken without stammering first.

Looking at everyone in the campfire, from Catelyn, Robb, Renly, the odd, short old man in robes named Qyburn, and soldiers in armor, she continued, “I already played nurse to the Kingslayer in saving him from drowning in the bath. It doesn’t make me a healer.”

From across the campfire, she found Hyle Hunt. His plain face was made remarkable for the first and probably the only time in his life due to his half-shut left eye, courtesy of her fist.

Nearly half a moon had passed since being warned by a furious Randyll Tarly that Hyle and a good number of men, some Rainbowguard among them, deployed a mummer’s act of niceness for her maidenhead. “Healing is not the kind of knowledge I have just because I happen to be a woman.”

Someone, then two, then three sniggered behind her. But when she turned around to glare, everyone had fallen silent.

Randyll, with features so sharp they reminded her of the fine tip of a sword, looked at her from head to toe with open disgust. “You should be grateful to be still given duty, _Lady_ Brienne. You’ve no right to the cloak upon your shoulders.”

“I bled for this cloak, I remind you,” she growled. “If not for me we wouldn’t have the Kingslayer. And his bannerman. Who are the Lannister soldiers you and your men captured? The baker’s son? Some fisherman? An apprentice at the apothecary?”

He turned red and she chuckled. “Speak to the commander of King Renly’s army again as you have and I will drag you to the kitchens myself.”

“That’s enough,” Selwyn snapped, stepping in front of Brienne. He was a head taller than his daughter, with shoulders as wide as mountain ranges. “How dare you insult my daughter when your soldiers attempted to dishonor her. And you knew of it. You knew of it and blamed her, nevertheless.”

“A military camp is no place for a woman!”

“How will the men keep their limbs and not lose more blood than they already have if not for women, then?” Catelyn Stark pointed out. Though her voice was soft, everyone heard her. There was no aggression in her voice but the pleasantness had most of the Stark men, including Robb, on edge. Brienne noticed how they all straightened up and stood stiffly. “Specifically your men, Lord Tarly. Your men who spent more time during this war at playing tourney than being in an actual battle.”

Refusing to be chastised, he insisted, “No daughter of mine—”

“No daughter of yours is here, indeed,” Selwyn reminded him. “But mine is. Your weak little girl’s heart will give out before she’s run half a mile. Likely to break her weak little ankles too before she’s barely begun. Mine can outrun. Outfight. And if she wants to, kill every man you’ve trained. Speak no more of my daughter, Tarly. Or I’ll hack you into pieces myself.”

“How highly you speak of a daughter you just sold—”

“Enough.” Renly ordered, stepping forward. He gave the men a warning look but lingered on Randyll. “No more. Lord Tarly, you will give your apologies to Lady Stark and Lady Brienne. _Now._ ”

When Randyll remained silent, Renly went up to him. Angry and dejected as Brienne was with what her tomorrow and the rest of her days were going to be as that horrid Humfrey’s wife, her heart still raced at the courage of her king to directly face the stubborn, battle-hardened old man.

“You are not here for me but because of my wife. I know it. But I am king and you answer to me. You’ve insulted a lady of a great house and cared little for retaining the honor of another. A lady who is still in _my_ Rainbowguard. Apologize,” he commanded. “Or I won’t stop Lord Selwyn from doing exactly what he wants with you.”

Selwyn didn’t wait for Randyll to obey the king. He drew out his sword and charged toward the man before Brienne could stop him. Everyone except for Brienne cried out. Lady Catelyn shouted, “Lord Selwyn! Stay your blade!”

“I apologize,” Randyll was gruff. He hadn’t retreated one step from Selwyn. He looked at Catelyn then Brienne. “To both of you.”

“Very well.” Renly seemed satisfied. “Lady Brienne. If you may approach.”

Brienne walked around the fire. Selwyn pushed his sword back in his scabbard, muttering under his breath while the few men he had grumbled.

Standing before Renly, Brienne pleaded at him with her eyes to let her last night as his Rainbowguard in service to _him_ , not to play nurse again to the Kingslayer of all people. Over Renly’s head, she saw Randyll looking at her with

“You will take charge of the kingslayer’s health for the night. Yet again.” He gave a quick shake of his head as Brienne breathed sharply, readying to protest. Moving closer to her, then closer until she smelled the warm, peach scent off him, he added, “There is no one to trust. Qyburn can only keep watch but will be helpless against him. You are stronger than most men so he won’t be able to escape from you.”

“Your grace—”

“We can’t have a Stark man around him unguarded. He will definitely not see morning. Not with his head still on his shoulders.” He put a hand on her shoulder. The warmth seeped through the steel of her armor. “Brienne. Jaime Lannister is too important. The longer we keep him alive, the more time we have to plan and ensure victory against Tywin. Please.”

That’s what did it. _Please._ She nodded.

“Good.” Dropping his hand from her shoulder, Renly announced, “It’s done. The Kingslayer will be under the charge of Brienne.”

“Your grace, this is unacceptable.” The nasal, weasely voice of Humfrey Wagstaff broke through the crowd. Brienne tried not to make a face as her husband-to-be stumbled forward. His cloak could barely contain his wide, round shoulders. In spite of the cold night, he was sweating profusely. “It’s not proper for a woman to be left alone with a man. Especially when that woman will be my wife tomorrow.”

“She’s not yours. Not yet.” Selwyn growled.

But Humfrey was insistent. “Your grace?”

“My order stands.”

“At least have another guard—”

“Lord Humfrey.” Renly said calmly. Very calmly. “If I wish for your advice, you will know. Brienne is yours beginning tomorrow. For tonight and until sunrise, she’s mine.”

The crowd slowly dispersed until only Brienne and Selwyn were left. She ignored Humfrey hissing at her to look at him, that he needed to talk to her. When it became clear she had no wish to communicate, he retreated. She turned to her father.

Eyes the color of sapphires and surrounded by fine lines stared at her, from a face that suddenly seemed to have lost all fight. She kept her own expression impassive.

“I can not ask your forgiveness, Brienne. Because I don’t deserve it.”

“You were not the one to lose.” She muttered, kicking at several pebbles.

“Child, I—”

He tried putting a hand on her shoulder and she brushed it away. He lowered his hand.

“Let me make this right. You need not marry him. You can run. Everyone can see I’ve made a horrendous mistake in bringing that man into our lives—”

“I’m not hearing this.” Brienne walked away but Selwyn followed her. Eyes flashing, she hissed, “Do you not hear yourself? King Renly has already approved the marriage. Don’t you realize what we stand to lose if I don’t marry him?”

Selwyn said nothing. Feeling herself beginning to tear up and hating it, Brienne grunted, “You know nothing, Father. You know nothing of the cruel japes I’ve heard all my life. You know nothing about the shame I feel of being the only one among your children to survive. I wish I’d been the one to drown that day. I so wish that.” Tears blurred his face. “It would be so easier for you. You won’t have a freak for a daughter. An ugly freak. And you will have the heir you deserve. I’m not it but I’m all you have. If that shit Humfrey is the only one who can endure the marriage bed with me then so be it. Seven knows I’ve shamed our House long enough simply for being the one to survive. For not being the daughter you deserve.” That was the knife that continued to twist in her heart. “Through him I might just give you the heir you need. My honor isn’t between my legs, Father. It’s in vows I wish to keep, no matter how differently you feel. Honor is the rock.”

She stormed away, retreating into the tower. Tears blurred her eyes as stumbled up the concrete stairs before missing a step or two. She fell with a cry.

She lay on the stairs in a child’s curl, trying to quiet her wails and sobs. A woman. _Only a woman_. If she wasn’t too tall, too coarse in the face, she wasn’t enough. She had been the one to capture the Kingslayerduring battle but in the eyes of the many, _the men_ , it wasn’t enough. There was nothing she could do that would ever be enough. She was only a woman after all.

Wasn’t it just like a woman to be felled by sand flung to her eyes? Wasn’t it just like a woman for her fate to be sealed by a cheater? _No. It was me. All me._

Her gloves were soaked with tears and the steel of her breastplate was not going to help dry them. Sniffling, snot dripping from nose to her lips, she grabbed the end of her beautiful blue cloak. Her cloak as Rainbowguard. A cloak she would never wear again.

The cloak was soaked through by the time she found some calm.

The world bearing hard on her shoulders, she trudged the rest of the stairs leading into the chamber of the Kingslayer. Another swipe of her hand over her too-warm face then she unlocked the door. She tucked the key in one of the buckles on her boot and entered.

“You again.” Croaked Jaime Lannister. Chains rattled as he tried getting a better look at her. She remained by the open door, watching his head turn slightly toward her. He made a sound that she supposed was a laugh, except for the gasps and rasps.

“I thought it was some animal bound for the pit pleading for its life.” Half-closed eyes looked at her and she turned away, closing the door then barring it. “Except you’re a great beast of a woman, aren’t you?”

“Shut your mouth. You will not provoke me to anger.”

“I already have! Your scowl can be seen as far as Sothoryos.”

She approached the bed and looked at him. Face and hair now free of the mud, shit and grime that had coated them for many moons, she saw that the breathless whispers about the Kingslayer’s god-like goods were not an exaggeration. Even with the shaggy hair and unkempt beard. His hair was like spun gold, with each strand gleaming in the firelight. Even the hairs under his arms.

Emerald eyes looked back at her. He looked tired and sleepy, and his eyes had a dazed, unfocused stare due to the milk of the poppy used to drug him for the surgery.

Because he had been relentless in escape attempts, every time he was caught more chains were wrapped around his neck, his arms. Eventually the steel links began to drag and dig into skin. If not for the foul smell emanating from him, no one would have known about the infection.

With his voice barely a whisper, and his body still weak and heavy from milk of the poppy, moons of starvation and exhaustion, Brienne doubted if he could escape. But Renly and Robb refused to chance it and had still ordered chains around him, but only around his arms now.

“Your tongue could use some rest,” she remarked.

“Ah, you don’t know me at all,” he said, his voice suddenly normal before breaking into a coughing fit. She sighed and took the pitcher on the nightstand to pour him water.

There was little else she could do than cradle his head in her hand like a babe so he could sip. She was careful, fearing that if he coughed again it might open the stitches on his neck. The goblet emptied, she helped him lay down.

As he swallowed and breathed deeply, she lifted the bandage to check for bleeding. Her cheeks heated as he squinted at her.

“Is it true, wench?” He whispered. “It’s wedding bells for you and that creaky Humfrey tomorrow?”

“My name is Brienne and it’s not your concern what happens to me besides being your guard.” She shook her head. “Again.”

“Indeed. But if I were in his shoes, and I never will be because his feet are the size of a child’s, I’d be very concerned about my bride having shown her wares to another man. Husbands are supposed to get the first privilege of that.” He smiled at her drunkenly. “And only the husband.”

Scarlet swept her from face to neck. Her scowl deepened as his smile widened. “But, I don’t know how great a concern he ought to have. I was half delirious and didn’t see much.” He looked pointedly at her chest. “It won’t hurt to have a second look just to be sure.” Pretending to squint, he added. “Or maybe not.”

“If the next thing you’re going to say is how I really have nothing much to offer a man, keep your mouth shut. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. All my life men like you have said those things to me. And everyone who has I’ve beaten.”

“Not me,” he corrected. “You saved me.”

“I captured you.” She didn’t hide the pride in her tone. “But dragging you from the bath wasn’t by choice.”

“Gods fucking Seven.” His chest shook with laughter and then he coughed again. “You really believe in vows, don’t you? Wench. Oh, wench.” He tutted. “War is the farthest place you should be.”

Then he suddenly looked away. Brienne wondered if he remembered his confession in the bath. It was disconcerting that the murderous, oath-breaking sister-fucker still believed in keeping secrets for the king he had betrayed.

“Let me guess where you think I should be,” she said. “In some castle. Nursing a babe. Knowing nothing else about battle plans or how to use a sword.”

It was a lofty picture. Fireside with a babe at her breast. To be a woman like that, concerned only for her husband and children. It must be a sort of bliss. It would be the life she would have, were circumstances better.

“That’s your life beginning tomorrow, wench.”

_ “Brienne.” _

Turning back to her, he said, “You’d better storm the Seven with prayers the babe looks nothing like you. Except the eyes, I guess.” His voice softened. “Of course, a son who takes after Humfrey wouldn’t be so lucky either.”

“You’ve never met him. What do you know?”

“Oh, but I have. Ages ago. I was still squiring, I think. Not a man you’d remember. Until he speaks. Does he still sound like a castrated goat?”

Despite her anger and crushed heart, Brienne found herself battling against a laugh. This she won. Turning to go, she said, “You should get some rest. Qyburn doesn’t want you overexerting yourself. Your tongue will be your undoing, kingslayer.”

“I told you my name is Jaime.”

She grasped the bar of the door. As she pushed at it, Jaime asked, “I take it the wager for your maidenhead arose because you still have it?”

“How do you even know about that?” She demanded, whirling around.

_ The Seven damn Hyle Hunt. _ It was humiliating enough that every man’s gift of carrots and apples for her to give to her horse, every rapt eye turned to her as she stammered about the best way to keep blades sharp had just been a way to soften her into spreading her legs. But that the Kingslayer—that _Jaime_ even knew—

“Men have loose lips too, wench.”

“Brienne! My name is Brienne!”

She kicked at the door, nearly knocking the old wood off its hinges. As Jaime croaked for her to stop in between coughs, she let out a shout and grabbed a knife from around her waist. Then threw it. At him.

Silence suddenly filled the room. Even the fire, crackling as it ate wood, had fallen silent. Brienne was trembling. _She wanted to kill._ Her mouth actually watered at the prospect of drawing blood. She could almost _hear_ the wet whoosh of a blood parting and sinking into flesh. Breathing sharply, she rested her forehead on the door, her nails making holes on her worn gloves as she dug against the wood.

It felt like a long time had passed before she was calm again. When she turned to Jaime, he was staring in disbelief at his chained, bandaged wrist pinned to the headboard. Her knife had wedged in the gap between link and his arm and was sunk deep in the wood.

“Did you just try to maim me?” He whispered, looking at her. His eyes were wide pools.

“Don’t be daft.” She stomped back to the bed, grunting as she pulled knife. “I only thought to teach you my name.”

As she brushed off some bits of wood from the blade before sliding it back in the scabbard, Jaime let out a breath. “Lesson learned. For now.”

“It doesn’t matter. We won’t see each other again after this night.” She turned to leave again.

“Brienne.” He rasped.

“I swear to the Stranger if you die under my watch I’m going to fucking you drag you from the Seven Hells I’m sure you’ll end up in and beat you back to life. You won’t have me failing in my last duty as Rainbowguard.” Her eyes were dark blue storms despite the firelight in the room. “Go the fuck to sleep!”

“Just answer one question for me and I’ll go the fuck to sleep,” he mocked.

“One question.” She echoed wearily.

“Yes. One question. One question and you can go be a Rainbowguard for the last time.”

She cast her eyes to the ceiling then back at him. “I know you don’t think much of me being Rainbowguard—”

“Have you fucked anyone?”

Brienne’s heart dropped.

Impatient at her absence of an answer, Jaime grunted under his breath and moved his arms, the chains rattling. The blanket slipped to his stomach and her eyes fell on his lean chest covered in thick, gold-tipped fur. “It’s a simple question. You know what fucking means. Has a man stuck his cock in your cunt?”

“What concern is it of yours?” She managed to say. What was that loud, thudding sound in her ears? She could barely hear her own voice. Frowning, she pulled her eyes back to his face. His hair was a mussed, soft halo.

“No concern of mine,” he admitted after a moment. “But Humfrey isn’t the sort to last long, we—Brienne. He’s old. You’d be lucky if he doesn’t pass out at first thrust.”

“Because I’m ugly. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Is that the best you can do?”

“Men like Humfrey do not concern themselves about others. Especially a wife he’s intent on making into a proper woman.”

_ So he knew that too.  _ “Why should I believe you? You think you can give me what he won’t? You’ve fucked only your sister.”

His laugh was bitter and he started coughing again. The blanket slipped lower, revealing a slab of hipbone. Brienne remained by the door, hating herself for failing to ignore him. “Indeed. Had I been awful I doubt Cersei would still open her legs to me.”

“I refuse to hear more of this.” She started unbarring the door again.

“I have an offer, Brienne.” He lowered his voice. “It will help you on your wedding night.”

She froze as it dawned on her what he meant. White fury welled up in her, blinded her. When it cleared, she was shocked to see that somehow she was at his bedside again. Not only that. She had a sword pressed at his cheek. Jaime was breathing rapidly.

“How dare you,” she hissed. “How dare you insult me. If you’re missing your sister, just stick your cock in a bag of nails and be done with it.”

“She has nothing to do with my offer—” he gasped, stopping as she pressed the blade, drawing a small drop blood. Blinking rapidly, he went on. “Brienne. Listen. Think of it as a transaction. A transaction between two knights.”

“You’re no knight—”

“Fine. Alright. I’m no knight. I’m not a man of honor. But I never forget a favor. A Lannister pays his debts, after all.”

“And when did you incur this debt?”

“You saved me in the bath. Without you. . .your pigheadedness in staying with me. . .” The blade lifted as he swallowed. “Let me fuck you. I’ll fuck you in exchange for saving my life. Pleasure for one night for saving my life.”

“You wish to settle a debt? But you get my maidenhead?”

Feeling something very bitter rise in her throat, Brienne’s face curled into an ugly scowl. She yanked the sword from him and charged back to the door. This time she managed to open it.

And still, when Jaime called her name, she stopped. _Again._

“Brienne. Hear me. I know men like Humfrey. He will fuck you. He wants a son. But he will notlook at you. Hells, he won’t even get you wet. He’ll keep fucking you and hurting you until you give him a son. At least if you let me fuck you, it might be easier being with him. You’ll have the memory of pleasure.”

Brienne gripped the door, willing herself to move away.

And unable to.

She probably did not want to.

“Close the door and come here.” His voice had a sudden, velvet quality. “Brienne. Listen to me.”

To her horror, she did as he asked. Her face was burning. Her armor suddenly felt too heavy. Too hot. A prison she could bring with her wherever she went. Risking a glance at Jaime, she saw that his head was turned to her. His expression was inscrutable. But perhaps, because of the firelight, he was looking at her softly.

“Letting me fuck you is just one choice. Why are you even here? Why aren’t you running away?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. “You still have a choice tonight, Brienne. But it will be the last time. Marry Humfrey and you will never have that freedom again.”

Despite the storm within her, her face was calm. “Honor is the rock.”

He snorted. “You’re signing your life away because of your House words.”

“Renly will be within his rights to have my father executed if I run away. You know that. Even if he doesn’t want to, the other lords would demand it. That is too high a price to still have a choice.”

Suddenly, she took the pitcher and poured water. She sipped from his goblet. She felt him watching her. Gauging. Calculating. Waiting. Staring at the little pool of water left in the goblet, she asked, “If you fuck me, how will it happen? You’re bound. I don’t have the key. Even if I do you will still wear your chains.”

Her throat suddenly dry, she refilled the goblet. Wine would be better. Or ale if she could stomach it.

“There’s always a way.”

Tossing the last of the drink in her throat, she set the goblet down then turned to him. “If you fuck me. . .will you think of her?”

She had expected his gaze to waver. To drop. Instead he seemed to see through her, not at her. Saw her thoughts and the secret dreams and longings she had long buried inside.

“No.”

She continued to stare. Waiting for the cruel twist of his lips. His sneer.

“Wouldn’t you rather see my face in the dark when Humfrey fucks you? Or Renly’s? But I’m handsome.” He smiled. “He’s merely pretty.”

“Don’t speak ill of the king.”

“ _Your_ king is a usurper.”

“And what of your son?”

His eyes darkened and he looked away. “A squirt in the cunt. Nothing more.”

A child. _A bastard._ Jaime seemed to read this concern because he quickly told her, “I’ll take care to not give you a bastard, Brienne. You have my word. I broke my vows to the Seven but not you. I will not.”

Everything she knew about the chained man in bed warned against trusting him. He had murdered his king. Cuckolded another. Willfully took part in the abomination of taking his sister over and over. Tried to murder a little boy and crippled him instead. _He has no honor._

But from what he’d confessed in the bath. . .whether they be half-truths or the delirious ramblings of the fevered. . . _what_ was honor? Here she was, the same age as Jaime had been with Aerys demanded for his father’s head. Aerys who had ordered all of King’s Landing to burn rather than surrender.

One life against five hundred thousand. And a father.

And she, signing away the rest of her life for her father.

Pleasure. A memory of pleasure, Jaime had promised her. She should cut out his tongue. She should be sickened by his offer. She should have left the chamber long ago. _Honor is the rock._ But her honor was not found between her legs.

And tonight would have very little to do with honor.

“Brienne?” His voice broke into her thoughts. “Do you consent?”

Fearing her voice would crack, she responded by unbuckling her sword belt instead.

She lost herself in the process of undoing her armor. Pulling off gloves. The straps of her breastplate. The belts and buckles of the rerebrace. Though her fingers felt thick and numb, she did the task deftly, and also made sure to lay out pieces of her armor in the order she will be putting them back on. She sat on the bed to take off the boots, feeling very much the press of Jaime’s leg on her back. He was warm.

She loosened the ties of her shirt and pulled it off, keeping her back to him. Then she got up to take off her breeches, bending to push the hosiery down her feet.

And then her body was free. No steel digging into muscle. No burden on her chest. But there was no relief. She remained facing away from Jaime, wondering why she was doing this. That it was not too late.

Chains clanged. Sang. “Look at me, Brienne.”

She shook her head.

“Brienne. . .it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

She blushed and hugged herself, remembering.

“If I were Renly I’d appreciate the view. I prefer the front.”

Tightening her arms around her breasts, she mumbled. “You said there’s nothing much to see.”

“I think I might have said I wasn’t sure. Besides, I’ve never cared for the size of tits. That’s Tyrion’s thing.”

She took a deep breath and turned around. Then lowered her arms.

Jaime let out a breath and she almost turned away to retreat into her armor. But she stood her ground, daring him to ridicule her meager tits, the purple, green-tinged bruises all over her body, her thick, muscular arms and corded legs. She advanced to the bed, and cool air that had managed to slip through the warmth of the room whispered between her thighs, stirred the curls of her cunt. His eyes fell on the mound, staring at it with eyes burned bright like wildfire. A tongue wet his cracked lips.

There was an odd protrusion on the blanket below his stomach. She gulped, realizing what it was. Another deep breath then she swept the blanket to his feet.

Jaime Lannister was beautiful, even with the visible ribs and too-pointy knees, the muscles of his thighs and legs reduced to skin and bone. From a cluster of golden curls rose a longish column of flesh that was pink and textured in velvet, it seemed. _His cock._ Brienne felt something in her falter as she stared at it. Was it too big? Average? How will she get it inside her?

She climbed on the bed and swung her leg over his thighs. Jaime inhaled sharply. “No. Not yet.” He sounded strangled.

“What do you mean? You’re hard already.”

“Are you wet?”

“Wet? How am I supposed to be wet? Must I bathe again?”

“Your cunt needs to be wet for me to fuck you, Brienne.” He was breathing harshly and blinking rapidly. “It will be painful if you’re not.”

“I’m used to pain.” She insisted, reaching for his cock.

_ “No!” _

His roar made her jump. Brienne started to scramble away but Jaime started coughing. “Gods damn it, Brienne. Water.”

She quick poured water for him, once again cradling the back of his head in her hand to help him sip. He finished the entire goblet but continued coughing and whimpering. She refilled it then helped him again. This time seemed to work because he sighed and his head fell back on the pillows.

“I apologize,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“If you’ve changed your mind I won’t hold it against you.”

“I haven’t. Have you?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“You can’t—” he glanced at the hardness between his legs. She did as well, feeling something in her swell and soften at the same time. “It’s not yet the time. It will hurt,” he said. “If you’re not ready it’s going to hurt. A lot.”

“How will I know I’m ready, then?”

His lips quirked in what seemed to be a smile. “I’ll ready you. Will you trust me?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He let out a breath then nodded to himself. “Right. Get on.”

She hesitated, not knowing right away what he meant. When it dawned on her, she blushed anew and climbed on the bed. But when she began to throw her other leg over his hips again, he shook his head.

“Turn around. Do what you were going to do but facing away from me.”

Of course. He wasn’t going to think of Cersei but he didn’t want to look at her.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to bear your weight for this. I’m no help.” He pulled uselessly against his chains. “It’s better with you on your back for this but you’re the only one between us who can move. I need you facing away from me so you won’t crush my head.”

“Why might I crush your head?”

“Brienne.” Was all he said, doing what seemed like a nod.

She turned around and followed his whispered instructions to move up his chest. Her legs widened the higher she went. The furs on his chest brushed the suddenly sensitive skin of her inner thighs, inflicting little burns that had her stiffening and fisting the sheet.

“Careful with your feet. You’ll have to. . .you’ll have to spread your legs some more.” Jaime’s voice sounded muffled. “Don’t put any of your weight on me.”

She nodded, moving carefully until she could grasp the top of the headboard. Her legs were folded under her.

Jaime’s breath fluttered the curls of her cunt. She gasped.

“That it.”

“Is this—” her throat was tight. “Is this how you’ll get me ready— _oh_.”

Something wet, very wet and fast flicked at the slit between her thighs. _Her cunt._ She squirmed, instinctively moving away from the harsh, tickling sensation. “No,” Jaime panted. “Closer. Closer. Some more—”

Brienne almost doubled over as his _tongue_ returned to her folds. Her nails chipped away wood as his tongue slithered _inside_ her. She was trembling as if violently cold but her arms were dotted with seat. Sweat dripped from her upper lip into her mouth, down the sides of her face towards her neck.

Her hips began to pump, roll, hesitantly at first, until she realized that each pass brushed the rough hairs of Jaime’s beard. Prickly, sharp, scraping her—but _Seven._ She closed her eyes, mouth opening. _Seven. Oh, Seven._ A wicked wiggle of his tongue between her folds sent a bolt of white-hot lightning through her, sending her slamming against the headboard with a shriek.

“Wait—” she gasped, collapsing on the pillow, probably on his head. _“Jaime—"_

Either he didn’t hear or ignored her. She didn’t really care. Chains whined and rattled. As stars continued to dance and explode before her eyes, his tongue thrust more firmly in her cunt until it was a wet, persistent stab that turned her into slush, then liquid. But she burned. Burned and shattered yet also felt more one with herself the deeper his tongue went, the harsher his beard scraped the slick, petal-soft skin of her cunt. As instinct once again had her rubbing against his beard, his mouth, his tongue flicked at _that_ place.

Her eyes flew open, nearly popping out of her sockets as a second wave white-hot fire went through her. Through dazzle of stars exploding into a fiery rainbow of flashes and sparkles, she saw thick white liquid squirt from his cock.

Though far from exhausted, she found herself folding forward. Jaime grunted as her knee hit his nose as she moved to lay the full length of her body on the bed, her head by his feet. She turned on her side, catching her breath and looking at him. He gleamed with sweat and was panting too. On his beard and cheeks was a brighter sheen. _From me,_ she realized, embarrassed, bending her legs. Her cunt felt swollen. She had soaked him.

“Are you alright?” His question made her jump. “Sorry.”

Swallowing, she managed a weak little nod. “I—I don’t know what happened. And. . .” Gesturing loosely at his wet face and damp hair, she grunted. “I didn’t know that could happen.”

“What do you think happened?”

Sighing, and inadvertently pushing her face on his hairy leg, she mumbled, “I told you. I don’t know. But you didn’t hurt me.” She blushed. “There was no pain. I thought you should know because I—because I screamed.”

“I know I didn’t hurt you.” A beat and then, “Did you like it?”

“What was _it_?” It was the only question she could think while wrestling with confusion, a sense of deep relaxation that seemed a prelude to a sound sleep, and a giddiness that had seized her mind, her skin, even her bones.

“It’s what happens when you like what I do.”

“ _What_ did you do?” She thought she saw the ghost of a smirk. Embarrassed, she stammered, “I mean—I know, I know but what—I don’t understand—”

“I tasted you.”

He said it so matter-of-factly. Yet it was enough to bring the memory back. Gods, she can still feel it. His tongue. Him. She pressed her face against his leg, hiding.

“There are ways to get you wet. Kisses. Touches. I did the surest way because it also brings release. “When she dared to look at him, a shadow of a frown crossed his face but it vanished when he turned back to her. “Did you like it?”

Eyes wide, she whispered, “I—I don’t know.”

“You think so? You’re not sure?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “It’s all new to me. But it wasn’t terrible.”

He licked his lips, mulling over her words. “Would you like me to do it again?”

Big blue eyes stared back at him.

“Brienne? Would you like to do it again? With my tongue?”

She blushed anew but nodded.

His teeth flashed white, cutting through her haze. “Cheeky wench.”

“I am _not_ ,” she protested. “Until just a while ago, all I knew that could go inside me is a cock. I didn’t know a tongue could be used.”

“Fingers too. Anything, if you think of it. I’ve heard of smallfolk using aubergine. In pleasure houses they have objects shaped like cocks made out of wood or glass.”

Brienne put a hand over her eyes, pathetically trying to ward off the assault of images. “Stop. It’s too much. I can’t know those things. I don’t want to.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you used them?”

“No. What makes you think I have?”

“Because you seem to know of them so well.”

“No. I have never.” He sounded annoyed. “My brother is a favorite client of many pleasure houses. That’s how I know. When I fuck a woman,” he added, his gaze sharpening and his emerald eyes brilliant as wildfyre, “I’m the only one fucking her. My cock. Fingers. Tongue. I’ll make sure she knows it’s me. I won’t have some imitation out of wood or glass in our bed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”

“You didn’t.” But the swiftness of his reply told otherwise.

“If you want—if it makes things easier—” she began, sitting up and leaning over him. “You can think of her.”

She rose on her knees to get back into position. His eyes fell on her cunt, the look tender, maybe even loving until they rose to her face. “I gave you my word I won’t think of her. And I just told you when I fuck a woman I want her to know it’s me. Are you going to think of Renly when I’m fucking you?”

“N-No.” She blushed as the dark, handsome face of her king filled her mind for a moment. “No-No. I won’t.”

“Good. You shouldn’t. He won’t know what to do with your cunt anyway.”

She frowned and he sighed. “It was not my intention to insult you.”

“You didn’t.” She mumbled, feeling herself tremble as his breath stirred the sticky curls of her cunt. In spite of the tension between them, she was relieved that he had not changed his mind.

“Brienne.” Feeling the tip of his nose at her spread slit, his breath ruffling more curls when he spoke, she breathed sharply and held on to the headboard. “You’ll have to touch me this time.”

“Touch you?”

“I need to be hard to fuck you.”

“But touch you where— _oh_.” The first swipe of his tongue inside her was enough to rob her of speech. Panting, her big teeth clamped on her lip, she dared to glance between her thighs. She couldn’t see much of him, except for the bandage around his neck, the tip of his chin covered in a thick beard tangling with her own hairs as he made sounds that reminded her of hungry slurps of a clam.

By the gods, how she felt him. Really, really felt him. Her hips began to roll and pump again, her thighs tensing. She blushed hearing the loud rustles of their hairs, his loud slurps.

Keeping one hand on the headboard, she began to touch him. A palm on his shoulder, where the skin was supple and underneath the movement of muscles. Down his hairy chest toward his flat stomach. He was sweating and the hairs had become tufts of dark gold from the moisture. She thought to ask if she was touching him correctly when she felt his lips purse around something between her folds—

_ “Jaime.”  _ Her eyes were wide from the intense sensation flaring from somewhere between her folds. Hotter than fire. More acute than the cut of a blade through skin. But without pain. Not even an ounce of hurt but an intensifying conflagration brought about by his lips. His beard. Her head dropped on the headboard. _Tongue._

‘Jaime—I—” She tried to speak, her whimpers drowned out by the sounds he made against her cunt. Growls. Slurps. Groans. Mumbles. Her hand, flat on his navel through kiss after kiss and slurp and flick and lick, curled on the sweat-slicked surface, slipping towards the curls pointing to his cock.

His hips jerked. Chains dragged loudly against the headboard. “Touch-Touch me,” he grunted, a sharp plume of air blowing up her cunt before his lips wrapped around _it_ again. That bit between her folds that burned sweet and slow.

But his cock was half-erect already, a thick slant of flesh rising from golden curls. The tip peeked from under a layer of skin, and when she finally mustered up the courage to touch found it surprisingly soft and smooth yet also as hard as the pommel of a sword. Harder, perhaps. She closed her fingers around it, wonder and bewilderment over this new, strange feel of him taking her out of the haze..

“Touch me,” Jaime panted again, his chest rising and falling. Lean hips undulated against her hand.

She patted him. Brushed the tips of her fingers over and over as she would stroke a dog. The flesh around his cock seemed to retract. She wasn’t too sure.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jaime’s voice sent little tremors at her cunt. His breath washed over her. “Brienne, touch me.”

“I am!”

“Wrap your fingers around it,” he growled. His cock bobbed at her, as if to taunt. To point. “Now. Do it _now._ ”

Quickly, she did as told. He was so much harder. _And getting harder._ His sigh was a gentle gust in her cunt, rustling the hairs. He pumped against her hand. “Move my foreskin up and down my cock. Not too fast. Not too slow either.”

“Is this what it is?” She asked, fascinated by the flesh wrapped around him. Firming her hold, she pushed at it and was delighted to see a round, purple-red head emerge. She pulled the foreskin over it and he groaned. Stilling, she asked, slightly panicked, “Am I hurting you.”

“No. Keep doing it.” He sounded breathless. “I’ll tell you when it’s time. Uh, you can use your thumb on the tip. The head. Touch it in circles. Slow, fast. I don’t care. _Just touch me._ ”

And then his tongue was thrusting back in her cunt, drawing a startled but pleased cry from her lips. Again she moved her hips in tandem to his tongue. She resumed caressing his cock according to his instructions, swiping a thumb on the round, plump tip.

Frantic breathing and wet sounds of flesh parted and partaken filled in the room. Just as Brienne felt the stars rushing toward her again, Jaime cried out, “Now. On my cock. But be careful.”

Thighs and legs trembling, she moved away from his head, kicking him accidentally on the temple in her rush. He cursed and she mumbled an apology. She turned to face him, threw her leg over his hips. His cock glistened and beads the color of pale pearls dripped from the tip.

“Don’t rush it,” he whispered, arms straining against the chains. He looked like a sweaty lion, his hair dark, damp golden threads matted over his forehead and cheeks, his beard shiny and wet. His was the sheen of bronze all over. “Be careful. Don’t undo all my hard work by rushing, wench.”

“Brienne,” she hissed, taking a deep breath. Instinct told her to grip his cock at the base, and that the fingers of her other hand should spread her cunt open.

Heart in her mouth, then jumping right behind her eyeballs, sweat pouring down her cheeks and her neck, she lowered herself on his cock.

She froze as the tip teased the entrance of her cunt. She thought to widen her thighs some more, the better to take him in. With her cunt spread so around the head, she braced herself on his stomach and gingerly lowered herself around his cock.

“Ah,” she gasped, feeling the stretch, the burn of this tight, unused part of her intruded for the first time. He was not yet even halfway inside her and she was already hit by doubts. Not if it was right to give up her maidenhead like this. But to do this. To keep doing this.

“Slow down.” Jaime’s eyes were closed and his voice sounded far away. He struggled uselessly against the chains. He was shaking.

“I am,” she whimpered, feeling a dull throb beginning inside her, like the somber note of a lute. Gritting her teeth, she moved and seated herself fully on his cock.

“Jaime,” she squeaked, squeezing her eyes shut from the thunderclap of sensation that was more surprise than pain. Mouth hanging open, she opened her eyes at the same time he did.

He let out a breath. “You’re a maiden no more.”

Her body called for her to do something but it was so many things at once. Her nails digging in the firm muscle of his stomach, she gasped, “What do I do now?”

“Fuck yourself. Move up and down. Slow or fast, it’s all up to you.”

“But what about you?”

He shook his head. “Not tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Does it hurt?”

“It burns. Or stings.” She gripped his hipbones. “I’m not sure.”

“It would be great if you move soon. It gets better.” He looked at her. It was the same expression he wore when he swore Cersei won’t be in his mind when fucking her. “I promise, Brienne.”

Heeding his words, she began to rise, then dropped. _Oh._ She did it again, faster this time. _Oh!_

It didn’t take long for her to find a rhythm that suit. It was like riding. A lot like riding a horse. Riding a horse on a rough, uphill terrain. Lots of bouncing and holding on to her balance, but with this fiery burst of everything hot and good in her cunt. The stretch, the feel—everything.

And the entire time Jaime watched her.

For the first time in her life, Brienne didn’t feel conscious of her freckles or her twice-broken nose, her too-thick lips and wide mouth. All the cruel japes rained on her from childhood, the jeers from the knights and soldiers about her maidenhead and being a woman—they were not even whispers. They were just too far away to be heard. Blots at best until all she knew was the smell of sweat and woodfire, the feel of his cock and the wet, squishing sounds made every time she took him back deeply inside her. Emerald eyes. She stared at him too, biting and licking her lips.

He was beautiful. She didn’t know if it was despite the chains and sweat, or if they made him even more. It was hard to look away, and she didn’t want to. She memorized every twitch in his cheek, the half-twist and grimace on his face as he seemed to grow and thicken some more inside her.

“Brienne,” he sounded pleading. “It’s—remove yourself. I promised—no bastard. Now. Now!”

Gasping, she rose high on her knees and turned, yelping when she found no bed to land on but the floor. As she rubbed the growing bruise on her ass and the back of her thighs, she watched as thick jets the color of watery pearls squirted from his cock. He groaned through his release, thighs stiffening and legs bending. As the last of his seed plopped on his stomach, his hips fell heavily back on the bed.

Brienne stood up on heavy legs before sitting at the foot of the bed. Jaime lay catching his breath, but her eyes were riveted by his cock, now limp between his thighs. They were wet with his seed.

“Are you—are you alright? You fell.” He asked.

She rubbed her ass again. “It hurts more than when I had you the first time.”

He chuckled and she gave a little smile. Glancing at the stains on his stomach and thighs again, she murmured, “Let’s find you a towel.”

She looked in a trunk by the door and found some old but clean linen. She dabbed herself clean first. “There’s no blood,” she said, astounded. She went back to Jaime, standing by his head and spreading her legs. He sniffed. “My septa told me there would be blood.”

“Some women bleed. Some don’t,” he assured her.

“The queen,” she said before thinking. Blushing, she busied herself with cleaning him.

“What about my sister,” he said after a beat.

She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my concern.”

Jaime sighed. “We’ve had each other long before we knew it was wrong. And even when we already it, it was too late.” When she risked looking at him, he was staring into the fire. “You don’t get to choose who you love.”

A beautiful declaration from a beautiful man. Yet twisted and dark because it was for another. A person he shouldn’t have given his heart to in the first place. Brienne finished and put away the cloth. Then she went to the chair and took her breeches.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s done.” She shook them then her shirt. They were wrinkled. “Humfrey will expect blood but I’ll just sneak a blade to cut myself. It’s easily done.”

“How do you intend to spend your remaining hours as a free woman, Brienne?”

She laughed but without warmth or any pleasure. She took the cloak and hugged it. “There is no such thing, Ser Jaime.”

“As Rainbowguard then.”

“Being Rainbowguard.”

“Put your cloak on,” he told her. “And come here. Blue is a good color on you,” he added when she hesitated. But she draped it over her shoulders, remembering the day Renly had put it on her. His smile. The happiness racing through her at finally being able to serve him, truly, and love him with her life.

She turned back to Jaime, wearing nothing else. His gaze was quick to drop on her cunt again before his eyes slowly climbed to her toned stomach, her small tits then her face. His emerald eyes shone with the gold of the fire.

“It goes well with your eyes,” he said.

Winter seemed so far away from that night, and even now, though all she had in this cove in Tarth were memories and what little warmth remained from the dying fire. Brienne stood up, staring at the dark sea before her. The wind picked up and it didn’t take long to snuff out the fire.

She got dressed, finding by touch the rest of her clothes, her boots. She buckled her breastplate, pleased that years without wearing one had not affected her skill in putting it on sans light. Then she took her sword and walked away from the sea.

One the ride back to Evenfall Hall, her way was lit by silver stars. Stars as bright and plentiful as that night she made the choice to lay with a lion.


	10. Cersei III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Every time we leave a room, your grace, we leave traces of ourselves. Hair. Scent. I would think it’s the same for when we die. A bit of ourselves, our souls, linger when we’re gone.”  
> “A ghost, you mean.”  
> “Not quite, your grace. Something of us which neither you nor I will fully grasp alive. Something I wish to have a glimpse of without breath leaving my lungs for good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR A RACIST CHARACTER AND SCENES OF DUBIOUS CONSENT, SEXUAL ASSAULT AND VIOLENCE.
> 
> *****  
> A shoutout for the entire universe to hear to catherineflowers for her help in making these latest updates stronger and to the point! Thank you so much, dear!

Even when winter was just a slight taste of ice on the tip of the tongue, Niqho and other bakers in the Street of Flour had put aside stores of flour. But since no one, not even the maesters with their numerous chains, could predict how long this winter would last, the bakers ran out of all flour before a year passed after the first fall of snow.

Other shops eventually closed while Niqho’s and a couple of others remained open, albeit barely selling and struggling to buy the flour coming from Essos now sold at exorbitant prices.

Once the shop was warm and thick with the aroma of baking bread, Niqho unbarred the door and windows. He was a tall man but slight, with curling dark hair, deep-set black eyes and smooth, copper skin. Though dressed in an old, heavy winter coat lined with little fur, and worn but shiny boots, there was no mistaking his true origins. He spoke the Common Tongue fluently and touched with the accent acquired since settling in King’s Landing. However, there were times his Dothraki accent roughened the words of this language, especially when tiredness fell on him.

Gone was the crowd that used to wait in front of the shop for their bread and treats. He sniffed, stomach doing a turn that expelled a brief burst of sourness in his throat upon smelling smoke touched with the stench of flesh, hair and sickness.

This sickness. It had come from nowhere and afflicted only the old and vulnerable at first, then trickled down to healthy adults until everyone alive was vulnerable. So far it hadn’t gone beyond Flea Bottom yet. But the smoke. It smelled of skin and hair. The dead of Flea Bottom were burned.

It made him rethink his vow. If the khaleesi was true to her word that whenever he changed his mind, he could return east.

If his mind was not on the sickness, it was the mysterious burnings going around King’s Landing. _Nine this moon alone._

As Niqho swept snow fallen from the night before, he noted the furtive looks thrown his way, the whispers behind cupped hands. As he was putting the broom away, a woman, old and swaddled in cloak and coat, gave him a stare colder than the winter around them.

“Seven blessings, my lady.”

As soon as she was close enough, she hissed, “Go back east and take your sickness with you.”

Stunned by the hate in her face and tone, Niqho was unable to move away in time when she spat at him. She stormed off as he wiped off the sticky globule of drool on his cheek and noticed the few people in the street now staring at him. Children, pale and with shadows on their eyes and hollowed cheeks, clinging to their mother’s worn cloak. A lord in his gaudy purple coat astride his horse suddenly urging the beast into a gallop down the street. A hooded beggar, one of the many that had begun to sneak into this side of the city to escape the dire and dangerous situation at Flea Bottom, gave him a look of pure disgust before suddenly spitting.

Back in the shop, Niqho poured perfume on cloth and dabbed it on his cheek, the subtle scent of fruits masking the dry, old stink of the woman’s breath that lingered on skin. As the other shops in the street began to open and more people bustled about in their old coats or ragged cloaks, he remained in the safety of his shop, surrounded by breads and their warm, comforting aroma.

He spent the rest of the morning dusting shelves and managed to sold a few breads and treats to the few buyers still loyal and with some gold. How different things had been these last two years, he thought, daring to stand at the door of the shop and observing the few signs of life in the street. The capital, with its narrow roads and the unwashed stink that never completely left the air, would never be home. He missed being on horseback and the sun burning his back. But he was loyal. In spite of the growing hate directed at his kind, he was still loyal.

He returned inside to check on this morning’s total sales. But before he could make his way behind the counter, the faint tinkling of bells alerted him to the opening door. He turned, the smile on his face turning into a scream that never left his throat as a flaming torch was shoved in his face.

Two hours later, Cersei and her Small Council were at the Tower of the Hand, listening to the report of the commander of the City Watch. She wrinkled her nose from the smell of lingering smoke on the man’s clothes.

“He flailed about in the shop and tried running to the street but the door had been barred,” he said, head held high. Cersei would approve his pride except that he was the most unremarkable man she’d ever seen. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A nose halfway between pointy and bulbous. A jawline melted to his throat despite his thin frame.

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, thinking of the many changes that must be made. _Soon._

“Also, your grace, my lords, I thought it important to let you know this is the tenth burning within two moons.”

Unimpressed, Cersei retorted, “Is that all? Thank you for reminding us. Should we be remiss with our counting next time, be assured you will be summoned to remind us of the right number. Now what I need to know is if the City Watch has formulated a plan to end this violence?”

“Your grace?” His expression reminded her of a confused cow.

“You said yourself this is the tenth man burned alive. Surely you will be making arrests soon? You must have identified perpetrators by now?”

He hung his head. “Unfortunately, your grace—”

“ _That_ is not the answer I wish to hear.” Cersei snapped. “As commander of the city watch, it is your responsibility to keep the streets safe. Perhaps sleep comes easily to you at night despite the knowledge that there are mad men burning alive random inhabitants of the city. In broad daylight. The city is also dealing with a sickness that continues to take lives in Flea Bottom. Might I also remind you, _ser_ , that we have yet to see the end of this winter.”

“Begging your pardon, your grace. Because it happened so swiftly, there were no witnesses. But-But we will do as you wish. On my word, that within this moon the City Watch will find the person or people behind this.”

“A fortnight.”

“Your grace?”

“Did you not hear me? A moon is too long. Do you intend to wait for another person to be burned? You have a fortnight,” she repeated. “You will appear before us in this chamber as soon as it is light. If you don’t have perpetrators, you will not only lose your command of the City Watch but also your head.”

“Your grace—”

“That will be all. _Leave_.”

The man had the good sense to all but run out of the chamber. As soon as the door shut behind him however, Jaime was quick to speak.

“We might have better hope for answers without resorting to extreme measures.”

“Do you not think what has happened is extreme? Violence should be met with violence.”

“To an extent I agree—”

“Jaime.” Cersei cut him off. “I have not asked for your opinion.”

Unperturbed, he remarked, “You have not but as member of your Small Council I am here to advise. I speak not as your husband but as a soldier. A knight. Believe you me, I understand the urgency of resolving the matter. But you will not get the right answers with threats of violence.”

“Alright,” Cersei conceded after a moment, glancing at Qyburn first. “What would you suggest then?”

“Double the City Watch. Have them patrol areas where the fires have taken place. Impose a curfew if you must.”

“You make it sound so easy. You forget our gold is very limited now. Had the fires taken place in locations near each other that would be no difficulty. It’s spread throughout the city.” Cersei sat back in her seat, tilting her head at him.

“We have more than enough Lannister guards.”

Cersei relished the word as she spoke: “No.”

“What?”

“You are a soldier. A knight. Highly trained. You wish for me to insult our own men who have trained their whole lives to serve as mere patrolmen. And though the sickness remains within Flea Bottom, I refuse to put more bodies in our streets until that has been resolved. Lannister guards remain within the Keep.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“This is old news from you, Jaime. Must it be said again? My order stands.” She insisted.

Emerald eyes, one pair sharp and the other cold, clashed across the table. Finally, Jaime declared, “So it shall.” Cersei seethed under her breath hearing the mockery in his tone. “If you will not put more guards in the street, I suggest you start drafting letters to the leaders of the Free Cities where the people who were burned came from.”

“Why on earth would I do that?” What was going on with her brother? If he was not trying to order her about, he overstepped. It seemed a favorite habit of his.

“Six of the victims come from our trading partners in Essos. Winter has forced us to import fish because there’s hardly a fisherman here who would risk their ships and lives for the rougher waters. That's why most of our fish come from Braavos now. The silks and sweets lords and ladies in the city can not do without come from Volantis. The scarcity of skilled blacksmiths who have either fled the city or died from starvation has us importing much of our armor and steel from Tyrosh. Need I say more?”

“The victims just happened to be at the wrong place and time.”

“It matters not. How long do you think word will reach the rest of Essos that their people are being murdered here? That baker has been living here for years. He’s as much of Westeros as all of us in this room.” When Cersei did not respond, Jaime sighed. “All I ask is that you make a move before being forced in a corner in which there is no escape. Braavos has the Iron Bank.”

Cersei laughed without warmth. “It must be in the air this morning, how men think to remind me of things I apparently don’t know. Numbers. Places.” She suddenly sneered, “Leave.”

Askance, he could only stare at her. She glared back, very displeased at how bold he had become. Jaime had never been known for his tact but now he spoke to her with hardly any respect.

“Need I say it twice?”

“So be it.”

As soon as he was gone, Cersei turned to Qyburn. He had been quiet throughout the exchange, knowing far better than most to let the twins have at it. Her face gentled upon sighting the soft, almost grandfatherly fondness on his face.

“Your little birds remain hard at work,” she told him.

“They do, your grace. If I may so, they work quite fast, to have spread fear and distrust in foreign traders and inhabitants of their ilk within the city in two moons.”

“There’s little choice. Anyone who is not of this continent is a spy for the dragon whore. Rather than risking the armies I have I’d rather use them for if she makes the mistake of reclaiming the throne. The smallfolk could use sport as distraction from their hunger. However,” she continued, eyes drifting to the doorway Jaime had just passed through. “Do you think I should do it? Address the situation regarding the victims?”

“Your grace, what do you think your father would do?”

A good question. It didn’t take long for Cersei to mull it over. “Tywin Lannister steered the war to an end by having the Freys and Boltons slaughter Robb and Catelyn Stark and all those loyal to them at the wedding. Three thousand five hundred lives for hundreds of thousands that could have been lost if it continued. Fathers and sons gone. Houses decimated.” She traced a finger around the rim of the half-full goblet of wine. “Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop Stannis’ attack in Blackwater.” She sipped, letting the sweet, potent liquid linger in the middle of her tongue before slowly swallowing. It spread like slow, tamed fire in her throat. “Nearly twelve thousand lives lost. My father and son among the casualties.”

She lowered the goblet. “There is no measure, big or small, that can avert what’s fated to happen. A note. A promise. Gold. Daenerys Targaryen is intent on bringing her war to my doorstep and if she somehow gets all of Essos to rally behind her, I will be ready. Her dragons will find their end here.” A soft purr slipped from her lips. “She will never sit on the Iron Throne.”

Qyburn beamed. “You _are_ your father’s daughter, your grace.”

Cersei finished the wine. It was more robust. Sweeter. “What of Petyr Baelish?”

“Lord Baelish should arrive anytime within the week, your grace.”

“Good. Very good.” Now she was really pleased. “Lord Rosby’s death has opened a seat the Small Council. With all the titles and lands my father had given him, Petyr Baelish should accept his old post as Master of Coin without asking for more.”

“Indeed, your grace. House Lannister has been most generous to him.”

“There’s still the matter of Dorne.” She pursed her lips. Dorne. Harsh. Haughty. _Barbarians._ A bold, uncontrollable lot that somehow produced that weak-hearted Elia. _Had Rhaegar been wiser and chosen me, he would never have noticed that wild wolf._ The war promised at the other side of the world would be the last chapter of the war begun by Rhaegar. A war where the first page was not Rhaegar’s foolishness in stealing Robert’s betrothed, but for choosing Elia over Cersei.

Seeing the gold of Ser Gregor’s armor at the corner of her eye, she wondered for possibly the thousandth time about the rumors.

She had no hate for Elia—she was too weak, too delicate for Cersei to bother with alive. Bound to bed due to one illness after another for most of her marriage to Rhaegar, she was now a bigger force dead. Cersei cared little if her guard had indeed raped the woman while still dripping with her baby son’s blood and brains. Murder and rapes were natural consequences of war. It was why Cersei was determined to fight with everything she had to win. There was no other choice.

But she needed allies. Even when they were enemies.

“We could send a summons again, your grace, if you wish.”

“No. A queen doesn’t beg a mere prince. If Doran wishes for Dorne to take its seat in the Small Council he’s been given chance upon chance. We have sent the last. If there’s still no response, the next time a more complete Small Council convenes I wish to address the issue of my daughter’s betrothal to his son.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“We should also see about securing the north even more. House Bolton still holds it but Roose’s son is still too young to take the reins. I also won’t have his bastard doing anything that can be directly connected to the crown.” She stood up. “Are there any other matters?”

“Your grace, would you mind if we vacate the comforts of this office for a while and go to my laboratory? I have made significant progress in my study and it would be a great honor to show you how far I’ve come.”

“Wonderful. I shall follow shortly.”

Because his laboratory was situated so far down below the Red Keep, Cersei went to her chambers first to be dressed in a warm cloak. Taena directed the other handmaidens on the task, fixing a fold here and there, scrutinizing knots and sweeping away lint with her delicate, dusky hands.

“You look lovelier than usual,” Cersei remarked, herself reaching over to sweep a black silky tendril away from Taena’s smooth cheek. Her dress was heavy silk, of a purple so deep it was almost black. The bodice was topped by delicate black lace stitched piece by piece to simulate what appeared to be scales. Myrish, she thought. “This long winter is becoming tiresome to us all yet you look like a jewel.”

Unable to hide her pleasure, Taena smiled and curtsied. “Thank you, your grace.”

“If I didn’t know any better you intend to compete with the light of the west,” Cersei mused, tracing the graceful curve of the side of her neck.

“Oh, not at all your grace. You are an eternal light if I may say so. It’s not too proper at all to find pleasure in these trying times but this is my first winter. I admit I quite like the cold. Although it does get too much some nights. Days too.”

“It’s a gift to still have some innocence.” Cersei cupped her cheek, her thumb on the full, sensual curve of her upper lip. She smiled as Taena stilled. “No wonder the entire court finds you fascinating.”

Lowering her hand back to her side, Cersei heard the soft breath Taena released. “Your grace is very generous. But without being disrespectful, it is not I who draws eyes.”

Cersei regarded her, taking in the bold thrust of her full breasts, her small waist. “We shall see about that.”

With Ser Gregor, she crossed the courtyard, noting how dark the skies had become when only mere hours had passed since sunlight. Her breath floated like a white specter in the air as she made her way towards the concrete, serpentine stairs leading to Qyburn’s laboratory.

Endless and seemingly twisting tighter and tighter the lower they went, the air grew more dank despite the presence of torches lending light and warmth She heard the steel of Ser Gregor’s armor scraping the walls as they climbed lower and lower the narrow passageway. Qyburn was waiting for them at the last step, a torch in his hand.

He bowed deeply but Cersei hardly noticed. Because it had been ages since she had set foot here, the changes fascinated her. Long tables had been brought down, and on them were clear vessels of varying size in which limbs and other body parts, as well as a menagerie of animals floated in amber pools.

For a place so far down below the Red Keep, light was abundant and the room unstuffy. But her nose picked up a scent she couldn’t quite identify. Something beyond dead. Something she would never know.

“You have been busy,” she told Qyburn.

He smiled. “Your support has been very encouraging, your grace.”

“Clearly,” she remarked, walking in an aisle flanked by more wide tables with more curiosities floating in amber pools. One, in a vessel smaller than most, caught her eye. She took it and turned to Qyburn.

“What’s this?”

“Not an animal, your grace. But a human being.” Cersei almost dropped the sealed vessel. Pleased that her courage had erased her shock, she looked at the little thing floating in the pool. The head was quite large compared to the rest of the body.

“I acquired her from a woods witch.”

“Her,” she murmured, recalling her own brush with the sort. Her fury at Robert’s refusal to love her had driven her to terminate the child he’d planted in her belly. Jaime had been the one to seek a woods witch to cleanse her.

“Death fascinates you doesn’t it,” she remarked, putting it down and clasping her hands.

“Every time we leave a room, your grace, we leave traces of ourselves. Hair. Scent. I would think it’s the same for when we die. A bit of ourselves, our souls, linger when we’re gone.”

“A ghost, you mean.”

“Not quite, your grace. Something of us which neither you nor I will fully grasp alive. Something I wish to have a glimpse of without breath leaving my lungs for good.”

“A worthwhile study, if I may so.”

A small grandfatherly smile lit up his face. “The Citadel thinks not, unfortunately. But how can death not be fascinating? There are more questions than when alive. And the body of the dead will always yield secrets.”

“And living bodies?”

“Even better.”

“Your passion for the dead is unsurprising, Qyburn. I fear I’d have to fight for your time.”

“Worry not, your grace. I am your loyal servant always. As a gesture of gratitude for your support and the responsibility you’ve given me regarding the problem in Flea Bottom, there is something I must show you. If you could follow me?”

He led her further into the laboratory, and she saw more strangeness preserved in their glass amber coffins. An archway led into another chamber, this time with a little sliver of light falling on several pots of plants.

Cersei stepped forward, trying to come up with a name for the collection of the blooming flowers. They were crimson and shaped like lips pursed to kiss. She squinted, frowning. A kiss at first look. But not at all. She thought it looked quite obscene.

“This plant is not native here, I surmise?” She asked.

“No, your grace. I first read about the crimson lady during my days at the Citadel.”

“An interesting name.”

“Very much so, your grace. The leaves and flowers are themselves not toxic when touched. But when you grind them and collect the juice, it is one of the deadliest poisons. Slow-acting. A drop is all it takes to keep you in agony for three days before dying. A stronger constitution might live longer but there is no escaping death at its hand. Or kiss, given its appearance.”

“Yes. It’s quite like it.”

“When your grace gave me the responsibility of finding a solution to control the growing population at Flea Bottom, I was reminded of crimson lady. A drop of its juice in the food we send to the smallfolk is all it takes. It is odorless and flavorless too.”

“Death from something so pretty should be tragic but I find it not,” Cersei remarked, gesturing that she would like to look at one closely. Qyburn grunted as he picked up a pot and she inspected it.

“Anyone who takes it in their body will have high fever, severe stomach cramps and relentless vomiting, loosening of bowels, and difficulty in breathing. Upon death the eyes and nose will bleed. Days after the throat and tongue will turn black. You are burned from the inside.”

“It’s not contagious?”

“Not at all, your grace. Given how the poison is distributed through the food, it would appear an epidemic is at hand. The bodies of the few I asked the High Septon to surrender to me merely died from fevers and starvation.”

“I applaud your swift action. However I am surprised at how quickly you have obtained the plants since they are not native to Westeros.”

Qyburn’s smile was serene. “The plant comes from the Red Waste. But I have been growing them for a while. There are not enough ways to kill a man, your grace. But there will always be a way to deliver death unnoticed. The experiments you’ve given me free reign of have been instrumental in determining the proper dosage so no one would think someone has been poisoned.”

“So that is what preoccupies you down here. I should have known,” Cersei said, unable to hide her satisfaction. “This is all very good. You must allow me to show gratitude, Qyburn.”

“More bodies would always be appreciated, your grace. And freedom for further study.”

“Is that all? You are way too humble.”

“It is everything, your grace. Everything.”

“Crimson lady,” she murmured as he passed her a sealed vial containing its juice. “This might just be the weapon that will win the war for us.” Looking at the plants she asked, “Is this all?”

“There is more, your grace.”

She remained where she was as Qyburn pulled aside a wall panel that concealed a passageway. She then went to stand beside him as he held a torch towards their front.

Then she saw it. A man in chains. _His eyes._

Swollen eyeballs lined with bulging red vessels dangled from blackened sockets. His lips were also the color of dark ash. Cersei watched as he groaned and tried moving. Chains held him back. Under the torch, the remaining crystals of his dress twinkled.

“I have been using him for my studies, your grace, in connection to crimson kiss. I keep him alive enough to continue studying the effects on the rest of him. He did not ingest the oil, your grace. Rather I rubbed it on his lips. Put drops in his eyes.”

“Can he see? Speak?”

“No, your grace. When not taken in the mouth, the poison still has other ways of taking the body.”

As Qyburn pulled the wall panel closed, Cersei declared, “We need a new High Septon.”

For the next three days, Cersei relished in being queen. The little gold the crown had would be untouched, hopefully for the rest of winter with the Flea Bottom situation being gradually resolved. Two more burnings had occurred, one a merchant from Lys, and another one of the many faceless ship laborers from Naath.

Panic was beginning to take hold of King’s Landing. She would have to address the people soon.

On the morning of that day, she woke up to the sight of Jaime still asleep in their bed. His hair was a spill of golden waves and curls just above his broad shoulders. He was beautiful and powerful even under the heaps of heavy gold and silver blankets.

The beard was beginning to grow on her, she decided, feeling the lingering burn of his kiss between her thighs. _My wild lion, tamed in my bed._ Last night he had pleaded exhaustion soon after mouthing her.

The soft patter of handmaidens’ feet at the door told that they would have to leave bed soon. Jaime opened his eyes then, heavy-lidded but clear emeralds just like her own. They lay looking at each other quietly, remaining still as the women quietly prepared her clothes and arranged her food, put to rights the mess of the chamber. More wood was thrown in the fire.

Holding his gaze, her hand slithered towards him under the blanket. She expected his smile, that arrogant quirk at the corner of his lips she was beginning to miss. Instead his eyes shifted to something behind her.

Then she smelled it. Cinnamon.

She took his cock. It returned him to her.

“Cersei.”

“Hush,” she ordered, stroking him in the quick, urgent rhythm he liked. She leaned in and took his mouth.

He breathed harshly through their kiss. Didn’t stop her. Got hard. But he didn’t touch her. When he did, it was to hold her by the face and give her a slight push. “Cersei.” His eyes darted to the women in the room. She grinned, knowing her ladies would be quieter in their movements. Hold their breaths if she ordered them.

“We’re not alone.”

“I am queen of the seven kingdoms,” she whispered against his lips, her thumb caressing the moist head of his cock. “I have rights to claim.”

She took another kiss from his mouth but his hand was harder on her shoulder, pushing, wrenching her away from him. “We are not alone,” he repeated, turning away. Then he flung the blanket away and left the bed. Taena, head bowed, held out his robe.

It would be sweet to lash at him. Humiliate him for refusing her. She glimpsed his half-hard cock. He would be ready in a few strokes. She sat up, watching him slide his arms into the wide sleeves of the robe.

“No.”

Jaime and Taena looked at her.

“Your-your grace?” Taena sounded unsure.

“Undress him.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jaime demanded, pulling the robe closed when Taena’s hands fluttered at the belt.

“My husband needs to be pleasured, Taena,” she spoke but her eyes were on Jaime. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, your grace—”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Jaime snapped. She let him walk two steps before speaking again.

“Taena,” she said, raising her voice a little but keeping it sweet. “You know I don’t take it lightly when my ladies displease me. I require only the best. What would remind you to do better next time, I wonder? A whipping?”

Now Jaime turned around. Despite the sway in his step from lingering sleep, he snarled at her, “You’re not doing this. You,” he said, pointing at Taena. “You will do nothing. Everyone out. Now!”

Cersei smothered her giggle behind a hand as the women stared in confusion at the twins. One looked toward the door, curtsied quickly and went for it.

“Only I can give orders in this room. Only I will be obeyed. Taena, remove his robe. _Now._ ” She let the word roll in her tongue like the sweetest candied fruit, enjoying the emerald and onyx stares at her that were huge with disbelief. Conversationally, she said to Taena, “How much do you love your son?”

“Your grace, I—”

“How far would you go to make sure he remains safe?”

“Don’t listen to her,” Jaime grabbed her slim little hand when it grazed his robe. “I will not allow it.”

“You will not allow it? Jaime,” she shook her head mockingly at his robe, at the muscular, hairy thigh peeking between the gap, his erection. “You are hardly in any position to allow anything. I am queen. I intend to claim my rights.”

She left the bed proud in her creamy skin, full breasts with nipples hardening in the chilly air that the fires could not completely chase away. She went to Taena, looking at her silk black hair, the voluptuous breasts straining against the bodice of her crimson dress and the leather black vest patterned with scales over it.

She walked around the woman, sniffing her sensual, delicious scent before taking hold of her shoulders from behind. “How can you refuse this beauty, my brother? Most wives would insist only they pleasure their husbands. I am not most wives, Jaime. I wish for your pleasure.” She started working on the laces of her vest, ignoring Taena’s gasp of protest. She kept her eyes on Jaime. Cold emerald eyes stared at her through the tousled blond hair. It encouraged her even more. “In this matter I will not be crossed.”

“End this,” he ordered. “I don’t know what your true intentions are but you will not hurt—”

Taena’s vest fell to the floor. Cersei grabbed her by her breasts. Squeezing the heavy mounds while licking her ear, she whispered,. “Am I hurting you, my sweet?”

Nipples pebbled from her rotating thumbs. “No-No, your grace.”

“Good.” She suddenly seized her by the arms, locking her against her chest. “Ladies, I need your assistance in relieving Taena and my brother of their garments.”

“Cersei—”

“Another word and I’ll have her son whipped.” She whispered as the handmaidens rushed to obey. “By Ser Gregor.”

Taena sobbed as the front of her dress was ripped, freeing breasts with big, dark nipples. Jaime’s eyes fell on them briefly before looking away, ashamed. The robe was pushed off his shoulders and taken away.

Jaime outraged and helpless was beautiful. A blessed sight. When the last of Taena’s dress fell on the floor, leaving her in just her silk stockings, Cersei, still holding her, urged her toward Jaime. She smiled at his tight jaw, at the anger rattling his bones.

“You must appreciate what I wish to be done, Jaime. Just because you denied me your seed and pleasured me another way doesn’t mean I will rob you of yours,” she drawled. “Refuse my gift and I’ll just give her to the guards. She’s ready for the taking anyway. Or perhaps, Qyburn.”

She let that sink in, intoxicated by Jaime’s flaring nostrils as he breathed sharply while Taena let out another sob.

“Either way, the next time you see her, should you see her, you will not recognize her. Nor will she recognize anything anymore.” She licked Taena’s cheek. Warm. Supple. “Even her sweet, innocent son.”

“You’re a sick woman,” Jaime hissed. Because no one was restraining him, he thought to leave without a stitch of clothing on. As Taena shuddered and sobbed some more in Cersei’s arms, Cersei waited until he was by the door before speaking again.

“Have I given you leave? No. You might wish to know that if you leave this room without being pleasured, I will have Ser Gregor hack the limbs of my handmaidens.”

As the women gasped and clung to each other in horror, Cersei watched Jaime turn back. Her cornered lion.

“Wouldn’t you wish to spend the morning in bed, brother?” She said pleasantly, excited by Taena’s whimpers and little cries. She fondled her soft breasts with one hand as the other slid to her warm, round thighs. The hairs were soft and damp, and past the folds a swamp. She forced a finger in it, pleased when Taena gasped and tried to struggle. She quickly gripped her by the hair, twisting it until her throat was arched. “Or would you rather witness the whipping of a child? Or Taena taken by my guards until I order them to slit her throat?”

“Please,” Taena pleaded as Cersei pushed a second finger in her cunt. “Your grace. My lord, you should let me—”

“See? Listen. My most loyal lady. Eager to please. How can you even think of refusing her? Or me, the queen?”

She tugged at Taena’s hair again, forcing her spine to curve up and thrust her breasts high. She looked at Jaime. Her beautiful Jaime, shaking with fury. His cock was a hard mast now pointing at them.

“Let her pleasure you, my brother. Surely that’s the easier choice?”

She didn’t wait for his reply. She flung Taena at his feet.

Taena whimpered as she got on her knees, hands climbing to Jaime’s knees, his thighs. He hissed and leaped as if burned but Cersei shook her head very slowly, her eyes veering towards the door. Breathing rapidly, his jaw tight, she watched his eyes burn with hate.

Then they burned from golden to dark lust when Taena wrapped her mouth around him. Cersei held out her hand and one of the women came forward with a goblet of wine. She sipped, looking at her brother through the rim. Taena’s wet kisses echoed in the death stillness of the chamber.

She couldn’t help but chuckle at the exact moment Jaime’s mutinous face softened, finally accepting defeat from Taena’s determined slurps. Cersei, without looking at the handmaiden standing next to her, pushed the empty goblet in her hands. She took a moment to enjoy the contrast of Taena’s dark hair and copper shoulders and hips from the thick golden hairs on Jaime’s thighs, the soft gold of his skin before walking to them.

With both hands she pulled Jaime’s head down, taking his mouth in a possessive, passionate kiss he was quick to reciprocate. As their mouths clashed her hand lowered to Taena’s head, gripping it so her mouth was never completely be free of his cock between breaths. She kissed Jaime harder as Taena began to gag. He started pulling away.

Cersei freed him from the kiss, took one look at Taena and declared, “You’re done.”

Taena’s mouth slid off his cock with a soft pop. Cersei pushed Jaime on a chair then climbed his lap. Her eyes glittered as he averted his head, his eyes closing as she lowered herself on his cock. She rode him in earnest but not too long. As she moved faster, she grabbed his head with both hands then kissed him.

He was hard. Warm. It was only with him she enjoyed fucking. But where there should be pleasure all she felt was the blunt thrust of his cock, her cunt swallowing his entire length in instinct rather than desire. It was fucking without the urgency.

How many times, how many nights, had Robert claimed the very same rights aggressively from her body, his hands on her wrists keeping her still?

All that had mattered was his pleasure. He was king. She had hated him with everything she had and tried to fight through his grip. But her strength could never match his, not even when wine softened him into a lump of fat. Screams, she swallowed. She was a Lannister. _Hear me roar._ Instead, in the dark, as Robert forced himself in her mouth, she thought of Jaime. _Only with him was it good._

And when Robert snored beside her afterwards, exhausted, she had licked his pale sons of her face and fingers. Tasting their deaths was almost as good as having Jaime inside her.

Jaime inside her was the first good thing she ever knew, and after everything, the one good thing she had always been sure about. No matter what, he was there. Serving her. Doing things for her because of love.

Now he was hard in her cunt, his eyes still squeezed closed but his half-open mouth the familiar promise of the pleasure he found only in her.

She squeezed around him. Waiting for it. The familiar burst of white fire. The moment she would forget herself.

He gasped, trying to fight her off. “Cersei, I—”

She held him tightly, fingers digging crescents in the muscles of his back and shoulders as his seed filled her.

His body sagged on the chair. She pulled away a little, waiting for that soft, dimpled smirk so much like her own. The glitter in his eyes. Waited for his hands on her waist, her cheek.

Nothing. He turned his head to the side, eyes open at last and blinking rapidly. Refused to look at her.

She forced him to look at her with a tug at his hair. “Never deny me my rights again.”

She climbed off his lap, walking past Taena still on the floor and hugging her knees. A young, pretty brunette curtsied nervously before Cersei then held out her robe. Cersei slipped it on then turned back to her brother and the Myrish woman.

“That will be all.”

Another handmaiden went to Jaime with his robe and he shook his head curtly. He glanced at Taena but it was Cersei he stared at for what seemed a long time. She knew exactly what he thought. Felt his hate.

But there was nothing he could do about it. She was queen.

Without a word, he went for the door, unbothered by the cold and the absence of clothes.

She did not see him for the rest of the morning, though she had no interest in doing so. But Taena she had summoned back to her side by midday.

During the walk to the throne room with her ladies and Queensguard flanking them, she took note of the dress Taena had changed into. It was high-necked black leather with silk blood-red crimson sleeves with exquisite black lace detail that reminded her of spikes. Her hair was no longer in curling cascades brushing her shoulders but in a neat, severe roll. Her eyes were not their usual black diamonds but somber and downcast. Cersei thought she looked more beautiful than ever.

“Lady Taena. Do you know what’s become so rare that it might as well be a myth?”

“I’m-I’m afraid I-I don’t, your grace.”

“Loyalty. But your actions this morning make me think otherwise. I have not witnessed anyone so loyal. The only one that comes to mind is Lord Baelish.”

“His service to the crown is well-known.”

“He was a no-nothing little lord growing up. His origins are not even of this continent. But he made his choice and for all his years of service and loyalty, only my father had thought to reward him.” Cersei took hold of her hand to stop her from taking another step. The other ladies and her Queensguard stopped as well. She looked at their joined hands. Despite the gloves, she felt Taena's icy fingers. “I mean to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

“Y-your grace?”

“King Robert, may he rest with the Seven,” Cersei remarked, “restored your husband’s family’s lands and titles. I wish to reward the loyalty you’ve displayed by having your son squire for Ser Jaime.”

Taena’s hand went to her heart, only able to stare at her.

“The honor is usually with the family’s squire but it is mine. Loyalty will be the currency of my court. Given your exemplary display, I have no reason to doubt your son also shares it.”

The woman was still speechless. Cersei, still holding her hand, resumed their walk. “This is only the beginning, Taena. I wish to see more of you and your family in court. The empty hallways need a child's laughter.”

They stopped in front of the ornate double doors of the throne room, now painted crimson with gold details recalling the mane of the lion. Taena and the rest curtsied before leaving to take their place in the gallery. For this, they would have to go through another passageway.

Cersei waited surrounded by her guards, Ser Gregor as always in front and three on her left and right. Then the double doors opened.

The conversation in the throne room halted as soon as the doors revealed Cersei.

Ser Gregor preceded her, his frame impressive and terrifying in gold and crimson armor. His very presence seemed to take all the air in the room. When he was halfway to the throne, Cersei began her walk.

In order to address the lords and ladies of King’s Landing, she had a new dress and matching shawl made. The shawl was fox fur and the crimson of her house. Under it was a matching dress in velvet, with long, flaring sleeves. Gold stitching detailed lions at the hem of her dress. Her golden hair was piled in an elegant roll on her head. On her neck she wore a thick chain of gold with a pendant of a lion. Its eyes were rubies.

She climbed up the steps to the Iron Throne, ignoring Jaime. Qyburn she acknowledged with a slight nod before sitting down. Ser Gregor and her guards positioned themselves in front of the steps.

From the throne, she regarded the people before her. Lords and ladies in silks and velvet and fur, looking at her for once rather than avoiding her eyes. Though each and every one of them had attended her wedding to Jaime, she knew they did not fully support that decision, nor her reign.

She would give them no choice beginning today.

“Winter has come and is here to stay. A time that will challenge us for as long as snow covers the ground and the sun can hardly break through the dark sky. It grieves me, as your queen, that hardship we have been facing now includes a sickness that has taken twenty more lives in Flea Bottom. The number of the dead has now reached fifteen and two hundred since the sickness broke out nearly two moons ago.”

Pleased to hold the attention of her subjects, she continued, “Aside from this, a spate of burnings has taken place all over King’s Landing. Burnings aimed at merchants, sellers and other traders who had called the capital their home despite not being born in Westeros. You are here today for answers. Answers that I wish I can give you right now.”

At that, the throne room erupted in protest and demand. “What if my father is next, your grace?” “What if the sickness spreads to us?” “Your grace, we must build a wall!” “We must cast out the sick, your grace!” “Yes! Take them out of the city!”

“Silence.” Cersei commanded. “Silence!”

She got ready to address them again when the double doors suddenly swung open. A man with dark hair shot with silver sauntered in, sure and proud in his stature and step despite the deep plum cloak that seemed to swallow him. Cersei did not recognize him at first until she glimpsed the gleam of a silver mockingbird at the collar.

“I beg your pardon, your grace,” Petyr Baelish bowed before her. “I did my utmost to arrive as quickly as possible upon getting your summons. When told you were here with your subjects, I thought to rush instead of waiting.”

“Lord Baelish,” she acknowledged, annoyed that his entrance had stolen attention from her. “Your dedication is appreciated.”

“I’m apologize for being unable to wait for summons, your grace. I beg your forgiveness,” Petyr continued, straightening up. “But I have an urgent matter that refuses to be delayed. A matter, ladies and lords of the court, that endangers all of Westeros. Your grace, far and isolated as I have been in the Vale, I have kept my eyes open and my ears on whispers.”

Cersei glanced at Qyburn but he looked as mystified as her. “Whispers?”

“Whispers of an imminent invasion by Daenerys Targaryen, your grace. I wish it were false but it’s the truth.” He turned around, addressing the people. “As lord and a servant of this crown, it is my duty to work only in our best interests. Anyone who stands in the way is against all that we hold dear, my lords, my ladies. Loyalty. Honor.”

He looked back at Cersei. “Your grace, I have brought a gift. A gift that would have us never forgetting our loyalty.”

“How generous, Lord Baelish. Bring your gift forward.”

Two guards barreled into the throne room then, dragging a blond woman. She was missing one shoe and her plain brown mapped with blood. Her whimpers were weak and wet behind the gag.

Once close enough, Cersei saw her eyes were blue and terrified.

Jaime suddenly scrambled to his feet, the look on his face promising death to Petyr. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“This,” Petyr grunted as he yanked the woman from the guards. “Is no servant of yours, your grace.” He threw her towards the steps leading to the Iron Throne, right at Ser Gregor’s feet. “Scrubbing floors is not her only job. She also writes notes about the goings-on at the Keep.”

The woman shook her head wildly. Cersei frowned. _She keeps looking at Jaime._

“Make all the denials you want, girl,” Petyr went on. “But I have the proof right here.” He fished out a scroll from his pocket. Qyburn descended the steps to take it from him.

“No, no, no,” The woman whimpered from behind the gag. “It’s not true. It’s not I.”

Qyburn handed Cersei the scroll. She opened it. She didn’t have to read long.

“Ser Jaime—”

Cersei looked at Jaime sharply. “Why does she know you?”

“How could she not?” He shot back. “This woman accused of some unknown charge and who’s clearly been beaten is a servant at the Red Keep. Ilda is her name.”

She ought to slap him, right here in front of the court, for clearly knowing more than he should about a fucking servant. Instead she read the document again and glared at the woman sobbing at the steps.

“This servant. This Ilda,” she spat the name while crumpling the parchment in her hands. “Has drawn a very detailed layout of the Red Keep. Addressed to her _khaleesi_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The crimson lady is an invention of mine.  
> 2\. The character of Niqho is another invention.  
> 3\. Now. Regarding Cersei, Taena and Jaime.  
> I think we can all agree that as a leader, Cersei isn't just shit. She's a fucking terror. She makes Joffrey and even some mad Targaryens look tame. Whether this means she's mad or something else, I leave it up to the readers. But I guess everyone's burning question is what the fuck just happened?
> 
> If you've been following the story from the very beginning, you see how Jaime not only tries to rein in Cersei's violent impulses but took on the impossible task of trying to make her into a queen. Cersei in queen only because she sits on the throne but she's definitely no leader. This chapter reveals the fuckery she's been up to that has very little to do with being a halfway decent leader as well as being shit for a human being.
> 
> And that's what I've been building up from the beginning. This being fanfic, we know that Cersei will never be Person of the Year. But I wished to coax out even more just how she will be if she does end up on the Iron Throne and there's no one to stop her. So we get a person who's not only drunk on power but gone waaay off the rails. 
> 
> One of the ongoing debates with Cersei is whether she's a feminist character or not. I think George's writing of her IS feminist-to me, Cersei's behavior in canon and on which this fanfic is based on, is the result of her privilege, significant lack or total absence of any guidance from a trusted and I guess proper adult, and entitlement. Cersei is certainly far from simplistic to me. This is a person who grew up who was never encouraged to mourn and grieve for her mother, was left alone with just her twin brother to turn to, an absent father who seems to have never really grieved the loss of his wife as well. So is it any surprise that her anger and a lot of behavior and actions stemming from it is unchecked? However, that's not an excuse. Limited as Cersei's choices are being a woman of a particular time, she still had choices. Was she born evil? Did she become evil? 
> 
> But whether Cersei as a character is feminist, I'll have to say a big, fat no. She resents how being a woman has closed doors for her, for example, instead of being taught or maybe figuring out ways in making what limited choices she had work for her, like Margaery and Olenna. She SENDS WOMEN TO QYBURN'S EVIL LAB TO EXPERIMENT ON. She sexually assauled Taena in canon. The only woman Cersei looks after is herself. The only woman she's interested in helping advance further is herself. This is the side of Cersei I take and extrapolate in the scene involving her, Taena and Jaime. Cersei believes that to be powerful, she must behave like a man, specifically Robert, who would "claim his rights" so she does the same to Jaime and Taena. She takes what is probably the worst about the patriarchy and skewers it further by abusing a woman who has shown her nothing but kindness and a family member who has stood by her through it all. 
> 
> So with that idea, the scene was born. I put warnings not just to alert the readers but to make it clear that what happened is sexual assault and should not be in any way read as erotic, sexy, and God forbid, a turn-on or manual of sorts. And as you will see in this update, there are repercussions. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	11. Daenerys II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I charged you to be brave and to protect your brothers and sisters at arms. But I also charged you to live. There is no cowardice in choosing life."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See notes after the chapter!

_“Khaleesi.”_

It was a soft, careful whisper, dream-like with its gentleness. Fingers slid over her shoulder before a hand closed around it and shook her. _“Khaleesi.”_

Sighing, Daenerys opened her eyes. Fire was the first thing she saw, gold, fiery and strong. She turned on her back, blinking through the silver blond strands feathered over her eyes and cheeks at the small, drawn face looking at her.

“Missandei?” Confused, Daenerys turned her head towards the windows but saw only darkness. Her foot kicked Daario on the leg, who slept on. He lay on his stomach. She pushed her hair away. “Is the sun up already? Why are the drapes still drawn?”

For the first time since knowing her handmaid and trusted advisor, Daenerys saw Missandei hesitate. The woman also carried an air of desolation and helplessness around her. “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I’m sorry for waking you, khaleesi,” Missandei finally spoke up. Daario was beginning to stir just then. He turned on his back, the blanket slipping to reveal the rippled muscles of his stomach then his soft cock resting on thick dark curls. As he covered himself, Missandei continued, “But there is an urgent matter. Ser Barristan thought it better to alert you as soon as possible.”

“What’s going on?” Daario asked as Daenerys left the bed. Missandei held out the long robe of black silk for her. Daenerys pushed her arms into the sleeves and Missandei quickly went to her front to secure the belt closed.

“It’s better to hear it from Ser Barristan,” Missandei replied, helping Daenerys into her shoes next. Daario left the bed then, striding naked to a bench where he’d left his clothes and armor.

Daario was still securing the last of his armor’s buckles on his body as an Unsullied opened the door for them in the Small Council chambers. There Ser Barristan was, in a robe too rather than his usual armor and cloak. With him were a man and woman she didn’t recognize at first, until she gave them a second look and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Nyri,” she said slowly, staring at the woman first then the man with her. As they bowed deeply before her, she shook her head, still disbelieving. “Grey Worm.”

Nyri’s round face seemed to have fewer lines now that she no longer spent many days under the sun and harsh elements. Grey Worm still looked strong, but with a hardness in his eyes that Daenerys had never seen before.

“Khaleesi,” they murmured as she went to them, taking their hands to pull them on their feet. Her heart raced as she cupped her former handmaiden by the cheek and squeezed the hand of the loyal Unsullied soldier hard.

“You’ve returned.” Relief and gladness swept any traces of sleep from within her body. “Are you well? Do you need food, drink?”

As Nyri shook her head, Grey Worm spoke, “We are sorry, khaleesi. It’s not yet our time to return but we had to.” Gone was the halting, slow way he used to speak the Common Tongue. He glanced at Nyri, who was now clutching Daenerys’ hand in both her own. “We couldn’t trust that a letter would reach you on time. Or if we would still be alive when you respond.”

“Perhaps,” Barristan spoke up, “it’s better if we all have a seat.”

Nyri kissed Daenerys’ hand before letting go. Daenerys went to take her seat at the end of the table, with Barristan and Daario on her left and Missandei at her right. Nyri and Grey Worm insisted on remaining standing.

“What we have to say is news that can’t wait long, khaleesi. We had to get out of King’s Landing with only the clothes on our back.” Nyri said. For the first time Daenerys noticed that their clothes were stiff with grime. They carried the faint scent of the sea and the note of the unwashed. “You’ve charged us with a mission and we have information that could advance your plan.”

Her voice suddenly faltered. Grey Worm quickly took over.

“Foreigners in King’s Landing are being attacked, khaleesi. At the time we left seven have been burned alive.”

Daenerys’ blood ran cold. “On Cersei’s orders?”

“No, khaleesi. We have no reason to think she is aware of our mission. But a strange sickness has spread in King’s Landing. We are being accused of bringing and spreading it.” He paused. “Foreigners.”

“We were waiting for a caravan to bring us here after we’ve sailed when word reached us that Niqho had been burned alive,” Nyri said. “Khaleesi, we tried to bring him with us but he insisted on staying. He wished to continue the mission.”

Niqho. One of few in her khalasar to have survived the Red Waste with her. He who remained at her side no matter and protected her from all harm. As her heart twisted remembering the young man, Barristan spoke up.

“Niqho seems to be the only casualty from the mission. But if foreigners are being targeted indiscriminately, we have to prepare for the inevitability of their return.” He suddenly paused, as if struggling what to say next. “Or death.”

Daenerys saw it was not easy for him either. He had not been around the Dothraki for as long as she had but it was clear the loss of a comrade had a mark on him.

“They must return,” she declared. “I won’t have people freed from chains dying as a consequence of vows they made to me.”

“Khaleesi, we chose to serve you. We chose to go to Westeros. For you.” Grey Worm reminded her. Nyri nodded.

“Everyone in this room freely chose to serve and fight with you,” Daario agreed. “We all know the risks. Men like Grey Worm, especially.”

“I didn’t send them to the other side of the world to be murdered,” she replied.

“What happens when we finally invade Westeros?” He pointed out. “Cersei will not give up her throne without a fight. Given her penchant for punishment and torture, she will relish killing each and everyone of us. You can do whatever you can to stop her. Her soldiers. You have dragons. But you can never control when someone dies.”

“No. I can’t. But I do have a say on how someone dies. Being attacked and accused just because they’re different is not something I can forgive.”

“And if you order them to return,” Barristan said quietly, “it means we will never have any new information. Isn’t that the reason you sent them there in the first place? To gather knowledge so you will be well-informed when you take back your throne?”

“Is Cersei aware?” Daenerys asked Nyri and Grey Worm. “Does she think all foreigners are spies?”

They looked at each other then Grey Worm spoke. “There are whispers about us, khaleesi. But she has no proof yet. I am among those who worked keeping her wine cellars stocked. Nyri worked for her dressmaker. The servants and guards speak of her a lot, far from her ears. We know she’s been told of our possible presence but has no proof. Yet.”

“That old man that follows her like a shadow. Qyburn.” Nyri looked disgusted. “He is the one with spies for her. Little birds, he calls them. He smells of death and it’s rumored he desecrates the bodies of the dead. And the living too.”

“If she has someone on the lookout for spies it won’t be long before she will be certain. If she finds out, everything we have planned will be pointless.” Daenerys declared. “Make no mistake. If Cersei unmasks one of you, death will not be easy.”

Burned alive. _Just like Viserys._ Niqho deserved better.

“It would be a mistake to pull out your people,” Daario said. “Ser Barristan, don’t you agree with me?”

“The men and women knew the risks, khaleesi,” he reminded her.

“You have given us freedom to leave whenever we choose. We left because we were afraid but we knew you wouldn’t punish us for it,” Nyri spoke up. “Those who remain in King’s Landing could have left with us. Or on their own.” Shamed, she looked at her feet. “They chose to stay. Like Niqho. We should have done the same.”

“Don’t. No. I will not allow that. Nyri, look at me,” Daenerys ordered, rising from her chair. As the woman obeyed, Daenerys went to her and clasped both her hands. Looking in her eyes, she said, “I charged you to be brave and to protect your brothers and sisters at arms. But I also charged you to live. There is no cowardice in choosing life. Not with what’s happening.”

“But we failed to protect Niqho.”

“He had his heart set on staying. There was nothing either of you could have done about it. Choosing to live is not cowardice. It is not weakness,” she insisted. “My brother and I were spirited away so we may live. For more than half my life I ran more than I dreamed from assassins sent after us. I know exactly how it feels, Nyri, to choose to live. To fight. I will not think less of you or anyone who chooses that.”

Letting her go, Daenerys turned to her small council. “Are we ready? For the inevitable?”

“Khaleesi, even if your order everyone who went to Westeros, your summons won’t reach their shores for at least a moon,” Missandei said. “Every man and woman who went never failed sending reports—even Niqho. They remain there because they choose to. They knew every kind of danger was possible.”

“You have sent two hundred spies who are currently scattered in King’s Landing, the Stormlands, the Vale, and even as far as Winterfell and the Westerlands. Upon your order, they will leave. A sudden exodus of such numbers could be suspicious,” Daario advised.

“But they’ll be safe. They have a chance to live and fight.” Daenerys glanced at Barristan. “Ser. If you would share your thoughts.”

“You have the loyalty of your people,” he began. “There is no one in this chamber who wouldn’t lay down his or her life for you, Daenerys Targaryen, because you would do the same for each and everyone of us. That’s why we’re here. That is why they willingly sailed to the other side of the world at great peril. If you pull them out now, it will be for nothing. You don’t wish to take back what’s yours with fire and blood. But those are exactly what the continent needs after too many mad kings and now, a cruel queen. The iron throne is yours, but we know you wish to claim it for us. And for some of us here, that seat is from which the hope of other freedoms rests. Because of you, slavery is gone from Meereen. The people are not only free but governing themselves.”

Every word weighed on her. Hammer. Spike. A fist to the heart. Daenerys turned away and without another word, took a step towards the terrace. In the horizon, she saw the first fingers of the sun stretch, the day itself slowly coming awake. It unfolded over the land, a hand of freedom instead of a fist. She watched as the windows of stone houses and huts opened. Listened to the swing of doors opening. In the market, sellers and other traders pitched their tents and unfolded tables, filled the latter’s surfaces with fruits and meat, spices, silk, leather and lace. Goats were led down the street for their meat.

She cast her gaze towards the sea, with her fleet of ships end to end of the shore. In the wind, their black sails fluttered like wings in flight.

She returned to the chamber. The Small Council and Nyra and Grey Worm looked at her expectantly.

“There is something I must do first before arriving at a decision.”

******  
With five Unsullied behind her, Missandei, Daario and Ser Barristan now in his gleaming armor and pristine cape, Daenerys walked the streets. She was a burst of blue in the brown, semi-arid landscape, dressed in leather vest and silver armor with the intricate detail of dragon scales, fitted trousers and her well-worn boots. The wind managed to loosen wisps of hair from the tight braids.

Men, women and children called her Mhysa as she walked past, pausing when a man clasped her hands in his rough grip and kissed them. As they approached the harbor, a little boy, looking to be no older than seven, suddenly leaped off the boat his father and other men were pulling across the sand. He ran towards her, little sweaty face split in a huge smile. As his father and the other men quickly dropped the boat to try stopping him, Daenerys knelt and beckoned the boy to come closer.

“Mhysa,” he said shyly.

“Good morning.” She smiled at him. The boy raised his hand, hesitated, so she nodded. His brown eyes sparkled as his rough little hand touched her face.

He was beautiful. Sweet and round-faced, with a mess of thick black hair and bright eyes. He would be just about the age of Drogo’s child, had he lived.

“Mhysa.” The boy’s father stopped to catch his breath. He was shorter than her, his skin dark copper. His clothes were loose at the seams. He was young, but his eyes were yellowed already and old. His nose was wide with a round tip and his lips thin and cracked. Barristan and an Unsullied moved to stand at her flank. “Forgive my boy. He meant no harm.” He beckoned the child to come to him.

“There’s nothing to forgive, I can assure you,” Daenerys held the boy’s hand, nodding at the father’s companions. “You’re hard at work and the sun has just risen. Very commendable.”

The men looked at each other, each smiling and not knowing how to take her praise. “That’s very kind of you, Mhysa. We had a good catch.”

“That’s good to hear.”

One of his companions whispered to him and he nodded. “Mhysa, if you could. . .we would be very honored if you would partake our generous catch.”

Daenerys glanced at Barristan and started shaking her head. “I can’t possibly—”

“We insist. Please.”

“Ser?” She asked the knight, unsure. Though the men and the boy looked healthy, their clothes were ragged.

He nodded. “It would really please them to share their catch with you.”

“I could pay—” Daenerys began but the fishermen shook their heads vehemently.

“We insist, Mhysa. We have plenty because we went out early. Allow us to share what the waters have given us. It is the least we can do after you’ve given us freedom.”

It didn’t take long for the fishermen to fill a basket with live, fresh-caught plump fish. Daenerys thanked the fishermen, who kept insisting she must take more. “Because of you, we are able to do work we wish and earn money for ourselves, Mhysa.”

“It is a right of yours I will always fight for. I only ask that you always work with honor.” As she spoke, the little boy took her hand again. “Children learn best from what they see in their fathers and mothers. May I know his name?”

“He is called Bahoz, khaleesi.”

“Bahoz.” Daenerys said to the boy, shaking his hand. “I’m glad to have met you.”

Bahoz laughed then suddenly ran to his father’s side, clinging to his hand. He continued to peer up at her with a shy smile. The father smiled at him.

“May I know your name, sir?” Daenerys asked him. “So I can thank you properly for sharing your catch?”

Startled by her question, he blinked and stammered, “It’s. . .It’s Pangho, khaleesi?”

“Pangho.” She smiled. “I shall remember that. And Bahoz.”

Missandei took the basket from her. Daenerys said goodbye to the fishermen and the little boy then continued leading the way to her ships.

“Your grace,” came the slightly breathless and irritated tone of Tyrion Lannister behind her. “Why have you brought me here? Do you intend to drown me?”

He raised his short arms to show the chains hidden under the long sleeves of his silk shirt. Daenerys raised an eyebrow and gave him a slow once-over that went from head to toe. Gone was the sooty, smelly clothes and mud-caked boots. Now his hair was back to its original white, and on his little body simple clothes yet made of silk and leather.

“I don’t believe in prolonging torture for anyone I wish to see no more of,” she answered. “What do you think my dragons are for? Or the Unsullied?” She nodded at someone behind him. “Ser Barristan?”

Tyrion smirked. “A well-made point.”

“I brought you here for your thoughts about something important to me.” She stopped to stare at her ships from a distance. Tyrion joined her, raising his hands to squint at them.

“Is it safe to assume I won’t be dying today, your grace?” He said dryly.

“Not today, no. But you will give me counsel. Speak the truth, you keep your life. Lie and you forfeit your life. As always. It never hurts to be reminded.”

“So simple.”

“I’d like to think so. After all, the slaughter of a man and his entire host was the result of a simple agreement among Houses. Personally, I believe in letting feasts be feasts. Food and sanctuary shouldn’t be sullied with something as despicable as murder.”

“That was my father.” Tyrion’s tone was clipped. He kicked at the sand.“I was never part of that plan.”

“Strange.” Daenerys suddenly mused.

“What?”

“Your innocence is not in question. I know you had nothing to do with the murder of the Starks and their bannermen. You also know that. That’s why you protest so much. Your father on the other hand made excuses for his monsters raping my goodsister and murdering her children. Your brother never denied murdering my father. You Lannister men are studies in the different shades of truths and lies. But with regards to loyalty, your family doesn’t seem so complex.”

“Do not worry, your grace. It is the least of our aims.”

“You should rethink that. You don’t want people to keep guessing about you. Where will your loyalties lie when my dragons take back the Iron Throne? Will it be with the last of the House your family slaughtered or your brother and sister? See, Tyrion, the reason it’s hard to trust your word, despite being truthful to me so far, is despite being hated by your father and sister your whole life, you’ve never really lost anything. You never starved. You always had a roof over your head. You’re glib with the sentence I will not hesitate to carry out. You are a man with nothing to lose. Perhaps nothing much to gain too.” She declared, seeing him take a deep breath.

“Meanwhile, because I am Targaryen I’ve lost everything. You might think I have everything to ensure victory but to me it’s a gamble. I would rather not lose men and women in taking back what’s mine. It’s a child’s wish. The best I can hope for is I don’t lose too many of them. And that it will never be easy to me knowing death is a certainty when fighting at my side. Just as living is.”

He sighed loudly. “With all due respect, your grace, if we will be comparing our respective tragedies we will still be here at sunset.”

“That’s not why I brought you here. Do you know who you are?” She pressed. “Without gold and your name?”

“I’ve no gold, so I’m halfway answering that. Though my sister would absolutely love to strip me of my name, she couldn’t. So she just wants my head.” His smile was forced and sad. “You would know who you are, won’t you. You can be above needs like your House and a name. Khaleesi.”

“I don’t have enough arrogance to claim that.”

“Then,” he said, affecting a sigh, “that is how you will lose.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. You brought me here to show your impressive fleet of ships. You promise to burn me with your dragons. Should I try killing you, any one of your soldiers, and Barristan Selmy himself, would slice my head off before you even realize what I had tried to do. Ships, dragons and armies should win you any war. Your people follow you. But you have no arrogance. There’s hardly anything about you that would convince me you are a dragon outside of your name.”

“So what would make me win, then? Deriving pleasure from torture like your sister?”

“A handful of your ancestors did.”

“All gone now. And I intend to do things differently.”

“Why am I here? Why are we here?” Tyrion demanded suddenly.

Daenerys exchanged a look with Barristan. She turned to Tyrion. “First, you must swear your life to me.”

“Swear to you? What for? And with what?” At her warning look, Tyrion cleared his throat. “Your grace. Khaleesi.”

“I will never ask you to swear before the old gods and new, the lord of light or any other god. But you will swear you life to me. Nothing less.”

“You only ask for half of a man, you grace.”

“Yes. A half-man who’s managed to escape his sister’s bounty. A half-man who’s escaped slavery and the fighting pits. Spare me the modesty and self-deprecation. We both know you’re more than that.” She moved to stand directly in front of him, prompting him to look up at her.

“Swear to me your life.”

Tyrion looked like he was about to make a quip but thought better. As Daenerys glowered at him with mixed irritation and impatience, he let out another sigh.

“I will not ask again.” She said, looking pointedly at his chains then the sea. The wind blew at her braids and blue clothes.

Daario moved to stand directly behind Tyrion. She heard rather than saw him withdraw his stiletto then the shuffle of feet on the sand.

“No need for threats,” Tyrion was saying when she turned around. Daario had only half-drawn the stiletto from the scabbard. Mismatched eyes stared at Daenerys. “You have my life, khaleesi. Yours to do with as you wish.”

Daario stepped away as she addressed Tyrion. “Winter holds Westeros by the throat as we speak. How long will it last?”

“Truth be told, your grace, there is no set time for when it comes nor how long it lasts. When I fled we were nearing the end of a very long summer. The last winter was so long ago I doubt even a man as old as Barristan Selmy has known of it,” he said, glancing at the knight. “The annals say winter lasts for years. It’s two years into winter. Days over there have probably become night. Food stores will never last long enough. If there’s still left, it’s dwindling fast. There’s no farming. You can try fishing but unless you’re in the south, you’ll be sailing towards the Stranger. Not that it’s much safer there.”

“The Stormlands, you mean.”

“And Dorne. Who knows? Maybe they’ve fared better.” He shrugged. “As many bastards as sand. Your grace, your wait can take as long as ten years or as little as three moons. Once a decision is made, everything is inevitable.”

“There’s only one inevitable I will accept.”

“You have everything to ensure there is only one. But your grace,” Tyrion Lannister’s shadow cast long and dark on the sand. “Which one?”

“Indeed. Which one. You have better knowledge of Houses currently in power. Tell me what you know of House Tarth.”

“There’s not much to say, really. A minor House, allied first with Renly and now my sister. The daughter—Brienne—fought in Renly’s army.”

“Cersei had the male heirs of Houses in the Stormlands aged ten and over murdered before peace terms were agreed upon. Girls were married off to the men from Houses loyal to her. Even the widowed mothers. Why not this Brienne?”

“She was already married.” Tyrion shrugged. “She was the one to capture my brother in battle. Jaime’s not spoken much of it but he did intervene for her and her child after the wars. Apparently she was the only one in the entire camp to treat him with any decency. He’s the only person my sister ever listens to.”

“So she would be loyal.” Daenerys didn’t like that at all. “To House Lannister.”

“I don’t know her well at all. I have glimpsed her only a few times. She’s taller than most men—even your Ser Barristan. And I heard only three knights could match her in strength. Just about.”

She frowned. “Taller than most men? A strength matched ‘just about’ by three knights?”

“She could possibly lay siege on a small castle all on her own. Your grace, if you’re looking to make an alliance with her, there’s very little to be gained.”

“Why, because at a ready she only has a small army of men able to fight? Tarth only has sand and salt?”

“Life in the Stormlands was a struggle even before the war ended and the region continues to pay reparations. They wouldn’t be faring well at all. Winter has only worsened a shit situation.”

“I can not end winter but I can liberate her and the Stormlands from suffering.” Daenerys declared. “All of Westeros. The Houses loyal to your sister are few and have only pledged out of fear.”

“And you think the others would side with you? Your grace, I can tell you right now who will not be at your side. The north, for one.”

“Because of Rickard Stark.”

“The North remembers, your grace.” Tyrion smirked.

“I am not my father.”

“No. I don’t see the taint in you. But to ally with you means northern fathers and sons going south. It’s never ended well for them. And if rumors are true, the north is now led by House Bolton. Roose Bolton is probably the only man who doesn’t fear my sister. Nor would he fear you. Your armies. Or your dragons.”

“A man who fears nothing has nothing. Thus, it will be easier to take from him.”

“Why do you ask these questions still? We already know you’ve made up your mind.”

“You presume to know what I think?”

Tyrion’s smile was playful. “I’ve been having wine again, your grace. Thanks to you, I can drink again. And know things. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Daenerys didn’t answer.

“I never thought honesty would be one of my virtues. You certainly won’t after you hear this. You’re making a mistake leaving Meereen.”

“A mistake? You just said I have everything to win.”

“Sometimes it’s wiser not to play the game of thrones, your grace. Your name is already legend. You have the loyalty of everyone, from soldier to child. Gold. Youth. Beauty. You will be gambling all of that for a chair that’s hardly comfortable and murder to the knees to climb.” Tyrion said. “I swear with my life that leaving would be a mistake.”

“Spoken exactly like a man who has nothing to lose. Don’t you want to go home?”

Daenerys looked out into the sea, thinking that perhaps, if she looked hard enough, she would see that strange land of winter where House Targaryen found the doom it first escaped from.

But it was too far away, and the sun burned too brightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, the last winter was nine years ago. For this canon divergence AU, I made the last winter to be so long ago that even someone Barristan Selmy's age (at the moment, the oldest character) has either no memory of it or never experienced it at all. 
> 
> My intention for making the last winter so much longer is to put all the characters in the same situation. No one knows how to deal with this, let alone survive. That's why we've had several characters so far trying to prepare for it-or not. Humfrey Wagstaff, before he died, did next to nothing that's why in Brienne's last POV Tarth was relying on imports more than usual and she's forced to sell some of the heirlooms. Cersei probaby has food stores but as Tyrion told Daenerys, since no one really knows how long winter can last and it's been two years since it began, it's bound to run out soon. Winter is something Dany will have to consider too, aside from forming alliances. She has a long way, I think, in getting the throne back.
> 
> If she does.
> 
> Except for Grey Worm and Missandei, the members of Dany's spy network are inventions of mine unless indicated otherwise.


	12. Jaime III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know what I did, Jaime. It’s no different to what kings have been doing since there were kings.” She looked at him from head to toe again then sipped. “You just happen to be the first man to have it done to.”  
> He shook his head. “I am not your enemy. Don’t turn me into one.”  
> “Don’t become one. I am queen and you are mine. I can do whatever I wish to you. Anyone who comes between us will regret it. Don’t you remember what you used to say to me? That you will slay everyone until it’s only you and I left in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR VIOLENCE AND BRUTALITY
> 
> *******  
> My idea for the scenes depicted in the tapestries comes from "Hell Screen," an early 20th century short story from Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. It's about an artist known for his very vivid, realistic paintings. Read it and be horrified.

With a cry not unlike an animal caught in a trap, the little boy retched into a chamber pot. Two septas assisted him, one rubbing his back and the other holding the pot. He looked up briefly, his dull eyes with the yellowed whites boring right through Jaime’s. The skin around his vomit-flecked mouth was gray.

The septa rubbing his back pressed a palm on his forehead. “He burns. We need damp cloths.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the boy cried out again. Half-masticated bits of food in a brow-orange pool gushed from his mouth. He was far away but Jaime smelled the sour stench of sick. The septa standing beside him drew the worn linen closed, her pale, watery eyes apologetic.

“You shouldn’t have seen that, my lord. I so apologize,” she said, bowing her head. Though she didn’t seem older than fifty, her voice was thin and scratchy.

“It can’t be helped. Show me to the kitchens next.”

More sounds of children crying and getting sick filled his ears, the thin curtains failing to muffle the sounds of their agony. Only very few were out of bed, dressed in clothes no better than rags as they rushed to help the other septas.

“Because so many get sick and sicker, we’ve had to task the healthier children for help. Not that it’s easy to discern who’s sick and not,” she said, sounding helpless while a couple of children rushed past them. They were so thin that if not for their baggy, patched clothes, he would think them as ivory shadows.

Foul stench from sick followed Jaime and the septa to the kitchen. His eyes were watering and the urge to gag a battle he was sure to lose.

Battles he’d fought many, and in all, there were few things he found to be true besides death: that a strike to an artery in the neck could send blood gushing like a fountain and the dying man gasping as if drowning. That in death, it was the same for lords, knights and peasants: bowels loosened, drowned the field in shit. Some who had died with their stomachs slashed were still holding their bloody entrails as if gold.

The smell of death could fill an open field for days, even long after bodies have been carted away. No matter how deep the grave the soil could never contain smell, and if bodies were burned, the stink of burning hair and flesh reached towns many leagues away.

They were nothing to the sounds of children crying and groaning as they vomited, and the _smell._ Gods above, it had to be the worst. The entire motherhouse smelled of it—sick and shit.

Jaime breathed shallowly through the nose, for he could fucking _taste_ it too. In the air. The stench of pain and agony was so dense it could be soup. He kept his fist pressed lightly under his nose, not wishing to appear rude to the old septa who, used to the smell, was not even wrinkling her nose.

Septas young and old sorted food coming in baskets or sacks. There was bread, some fruit, few vegetables. Something that looked like half of a pie was in the pile. A septa began slicing it into cubes. Another septa started cutting a small hunk of cooked wild boar into strips.

“We always ration after sorting the food, my lord,” the septa explained when she saw what he was looking at.

“How often do you get the food?”

“When the Mother blesses us, twice a day. Sometimes, it’s only once every few days. The longest was almost a week.”

He frowned. “No, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Leftovers must be brought here every day. Twice a day.”

“My lord, everyone in King’s Landing is struggling. Expecting food twice a day would be to press our luck. That’s why we always ration. Alas, as much as we try to make sure everyone gets enough food, it’s a challenge that doesn’t get any easier. Mothers and fathers getting sick and dying.” She sighed. “Children orphaned and sent here. If they make it here.”

“All the children come from Flea Bottom?”

“Mostly, yes.” The septa picked up an apple that had rolled on the floor. She put it on the table. “We have yet to turn anyone away but as long as the Stranger keeps taking their parents, more children will be needing our help. Seven forgive us should that day come.”

Jaime had been listening to her until he noticed that the apple was riddled with holes. A worm wriggled from one. The septa was still talking but her voice trailed off when she noticed he was looking at the food as it was being sorted. Without another word, Jaime went to inspect one of the baskets.

He removed the cover and found a few loaves of bread. All crusted with mold. The septa followed him. “We scrape it off, my lord. The bread we throw into a stew.”

“Does bread often come like this?” The law he’d drafted was for leftovers or better yet, fresh food that could be cooked. He walked to inspect another basket and found carrots and tomatoes riddled with holes. Some were covered with maggots.

“This isn’t right,” he murmured, looking in more baskets. It didn’t take long to conclude that if the motherhouse wasn’t sent old food, it was food that was rotten. “Answer me. Is the food like this all the time?”

The septas looked at each other. Finally, the old septa who had been speaking to him nodded hesitantly. “But my lord, we can’t complain. It’s still food. We can remove the nasty bits easily. Winter is difficult for everyone. We are lucky that the High Septon had spoken to the queen for help before he left.”

“These are not fit to eat.” Jaime stared at the baskets, the maggots crawling all over the vegetables. His stomach was beginning to turn. “This could be why the children are getting sicker too.”

The years have done little in blurring memories of the food he’d been given as prisoner of war. A muddy holding pen, chains, exposure to cold, heat, rain—a lot of rain—had made him feverish for most of those days.

But the food he never forgot. Pigs had eaten better slop. Worms at least had fresh meat from bodies to feast on. His meals were often bread coated with so much mold it resembled a furry kitten. Meat sometimes, but often sour and mushy from age.

Then that stew.

Sometimes, the guards starved him for days. After two days without food, he was desperate for anything. When a bowl of stew was given to him to eat with muddy hands, he did so—until the strong, sharp flavor of rot overwhelmed his mouth. He spat the meat and vegetables and found maggots both half-chewed and still alive on the ground. And more in the untouched portions of the stew.

Brienne had been the one guarding him then—the second time he’d seen her after his capture. The star-bright blues of her eyes had grown big from shock upon seeing the throw-up at his feet and the bowl he’d tossed away. As he gagged and forced himself to vomit some more, she had screamed for water. For wine. Anything.

Her boots were covered with vomit by the time she grabbed him by the hair and thrust a bottle of drink to his mouth. It was water. He filled his mouth. Spat near her boots again. He could still feel them. _Them._ Crawling in his mouth. Eating the fresh meat from the insides of his cheeks. His tongue.

“Drink some more. Keep spitting,” she urged, helping him. He did until it was empty but the terror of being eaten alive from the inside would stalk him for weeks.

It was still not clear to him what had happened but his food was fresh—or at least, fit for a prisoner of his standing to eat—afterwards. The meat was cooked though bland—if he was given meat. Mostly it was bread and some soup, but without molds and worms. Brienne also became his guard.

Jaime pointed at the baskets and gave the order. “Put these all in the rubbish.” He swallowed, fighting the reflex to gag. He pointed at the old septa. “If you will come with me.”

She followed him to the front door of the motherhouse, looking worried and fearful. At once he regretted the choice, having forgotten that the septa’s own threadbare clothes and shawl were no match against the cold. He was quick to begin shivering under his cloak and coat.

Jaime quickly reached in his coat for a pouch. Taking her thin hand, he placed it there.

“Buy fresh vegetables and meat. Spare no expense,” he told her, taking her other hand because of her owlish stare at the pouch.

“My lord, this is too much—” she tried to protest. He squeezed her hands, shaking his head.

“The children must get well. They need healthy food.” When he was sure she wouldn’t drop the pouch, he went to his horse. “I shall send blankets and fresh linens soon too. They must be on clean beds.”

Once seated on his horse, Jaime rode fast back to the Red Keep. The galloping hoofbeats were claps of thunder on empty streets. He steered the horse through narrow, winding passageways, avoiding those sunk in snow. Wherever he turned and went, riding past little houses with missing blocks of brick, shops boarded closed with slabs of wood, and modest-sized houses where traders new to money and comfort lived, the Red Keep loomed over.

His breathing was shallow, the icy air stabs in the heart while as he waited for the drawbridge to be lowered. Once it was down, he urged the horse to gallop again, pulling at the reins to stop the beast once they were right in front of the castle. It whined and snorted, standing on rear legs. He held on until it calmed down.

His squire, a skinny boy with limp brown hair, rushed forward to steady the horse enough for Jaime to swing his leg over and step down.

“Peck, bring him to the stables right away. Give him fresh hay,” he ordered. _My fucking horse eats better than the children._

“At once, my lord.”

Resolve lit by fire brought Jaime to the doors of Cersei’s chambers. But that fire was snuffed out once he stood before them.

The intricate, curving gold details on the doors writhed like snakes before blurring into senselessness, a void. As it swamped him, the squeak in The Mountain’s armor cracked through the strange spell.

Jaime blinked. All was clear again. The Mountain’s arm was moving towards the door.

His enormous hand closed around the lion’s head door handle, twisting it too quickly, too sharply for the simple task. Jaime cleared his throat, pulling at the collar of his shirt and coat suddenly squeezing around him. The doors opened, revealing the familiar grandness of walls covered in silks of gold, furniture handcrafted by the best artisans in the city. They gleamed in the gold of the sun that hadn’t been seen too clearly for years.

Jaime took one step then paused. When the chamber had been Aerys’, the drapes were layers of heavy red and black velvet. Pulling them closed was enough to block the sun and render the entire space black as night in the day. Glass-blown pieces of dragons were on tables, on shelves. Their eyes were jewels—rubies, obsidian, tourmaline. His bed had been huge, a spectacle of dark wood with four curving posts topped with the faces of dragons.

When Robert resided within its walls, he had mounted heads of stags, and lush furs stripped off the animals he’d hunted on the floor. There was always wine. His hunting instruments were in glass cabinets, some for use, some for decorative purposes only. Robert fucked so much that the whores were practically furniture as well.

There was little he knew about the interiors of this chamber during Joffrey’s and Tommen’s too-brief reigns. When he finally made it back, Cersei had been in the middle of ordering tapestries of voluptuous blooms in various shades of pink and birds so delicate a whisper had more form removed. Jaime thought them an odd choice for a little boy. Cersei then revealed that Tommen wished for paintings of cats, and to have kittens roaming about. She had refused him and ordered punishment for Tommen’s whipping boy that was so severe the child had almost died. Then she had ordered the tapestries of flowers and birds. Tommen never brought up cats again.

Now there was no trace of the chamber’s previous tenants. There were still tapestries, but of green fields or forests, blue-gray waters. One had a forest backdrop that showed wolves skinned alive, another stags pierced with arrows. There were tapestries of trout that seemed to gasp as they were flung to land, or crushed under the boots of smirking men. Dragons with their mouths open in a silent scream as soldiers surrounded them, hurling spikes.

One tapestry was a woman with light brown hair, her lithe arms curved as if she were dancing with an invisible partner, neck arched as if to offer it for a kiss. Golden roses and their petals surrounded her. A closer look revealed they were arrowheads buried in her slim throat and breasts. Red huntsmen hid in the bushes, their arrowheads painted gold.

He’d heard only whispers of House Tyrells’ betrayal by Randyll Tarly until discovering the truth a few days ago. That tapestry of a woman pierced by golden arrowheads was the last he saw before shutting his eyes, desperate to flee as far away inside from Cersei’s threats on Taena and her child.

The door slamming behind him was a slight sound but caused his heart to drop. His hand quickly fell on the hilt of his sword, advancing carefully. The carpets hushed his steps.

And there Cersei was.

Gone was the soft but excited chatter among her handmaidens when they would help her dress. There was no flurry of movement but great care. Gentle hands fastened jewels around her throat, checked that the cascade of her hair was perfect.

Taena, who would supervise, was absent.

All it took was one of the young ladies to notice him to stop and quickly curtsy. The rest followed, keeping their eyes to the floor. Cersei turned to him.

Of late she had taken to covering herself in as many jewels as possible. Emeralds dotted the artful roll of her hair, with more woven to the golden curls cascading almost to her waist. Her dress was heavy green silk with silver embroidery at the cuffs. The rich color brought out the gold of her hair and made her eyes look rounder. A triple strand necklace of diamonds and large emeralds twinkled from her throat.

Armor topped her dress today. Silver, and fitted around the narrow plane of her stomach. The front of the breastplate was detailed to simulate a lion’s mane. Each gardbrace was in the shape of a roaring lion, with emeralds for eyes.

She was beautiful. Stunningly and fiercely so. There was hardly a moment in his life when the force of her beauty had not taken him aback, even though she was his mirror.

For the first time since drawing breath, he was unmoved.

Cersei was still the most beautiful woman anyone would ever lay eyes on. It was a truth that would hold for many years, even when time erased the gold of her hair. But the absence of blood rushing in his veins, to his cock, was new to Jaime. As trying as his sister was, he had always wanted her.

But there was no desire. Not even a sliver of the pride in being hers, and she, his.

“Leave us,” he told the handmaidens. They remained quiet, with a deep interest in either their shoes or the pattern of carpets. “I wish a word with the queen.”

Cersei nodded and they were quick to pick up their skirts and leave the twins . Jaime listened until the last of them was out, the door shutting with a barely discernible click.

“The queen.” Her voice had a mocking lilt as she regarded him.

The way she looked at him, saw him, hinted at her power. She did look like a queen.

_But not the queen she should be._

“I see you’ve been making yourself useful,” she remarked, grimacing in disapproval over his old clothes. Some seams of his cloak have loosened and his leather coat had begun to peel. “But I fail to find comfort in a husband who would rather be out in the cold than with me in the warmth and safety of the castle.” Playing with one of the large rings on her fingers, she continued, “You used to want me all the time.”

Looking at him in the eye, she whispered, “You even fucked me when Robert was passed out on the floor.”

“You wanted it. I only wanted to please you.”

“And now?”

“Do you think after what happened I would still come to you?”

As soon as he spoke, he felt himself go cold. _They shouldn’t be alone_. Not in the same chamber.

Getting rid of the handmaidens had been foremost when he planned this conversation, so Cersei won’t get any ideas of any cruel games. But The Mountain was still outside. _Just outside._

After he had stormed to his chamber furious and hateful of himself for failing to stop Cersei and her twisted games on him and Taena, he took to the bottle. At least, that had been the plan. And he tried. But two full goblets was all it took for him to pass out and spew in the chamber pot upon waking up. He’d had to concentrate putting one foot in front of the other during the walk to the great hall for Cersei’s address to the lords. Littlefinger’s sudden arrival and Ilda’s bloody face sobered him up.

“What exactly happened? I have my rights and I claimed them. Did you think I was able to refuse Robert when he took the same rights?”

“He didn’t sire any sons from you after the first, did he?”

“Because it was your sons I wanted. Only your sons,” she said through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what I’ve done for you. You don’t know how he tasted after he’d fucked a whore. I still remember.”

“Do you know what you did to me? And to Taena?” He demanded. Cersei swept past him, pouring herself wine.

“Her,” she sneered. “She’s gone.”

“Gone. What in bloody Seven do you mean gone?”

“That little bitch. After giving her my trust, my friendship, she ran. There’s no trace of her home having been lived in at all. Whispers say the Merryweathers have gone to Longtable.” She slammed her goblet on the table, splashing wine.

“I know what I did, Jaime. It’s no different to what kings have been doing since there were kings.” She looked at him from head to toe again then sipped. “You just happen to be the first man to have it done to.”

He shook his head. “I am not your enemy. Don’t turn me into one.”

“Don’t become one. I am queen and you are mine. I can do whatever I wish to you. Anyone who comes between us will regret it. Don’t you remember what you used to say to me? That you will slay everyone until it’s only you and I left in the world.”

He remembered. Had meant them when first spoken and still believed himself to be the Warrior for his sister. The sister he had loved despite everything that was wrong with it and loved even more because it was wrong.

The woman he still chose despite the whisper of another name in his heart. Because he loved her.

That woman shared little beyond beauty with the queen who stood before him now, gripping the goblet as if imagining it to be her trusted friend’s neck. Cersei had always been quick to anger but she had never scared him. Not until that morning four days ago.

Perhaps Cersei’s beauty had always masked a monster. And a part of him knew. It could be why he never dared to call her bluff. Something in her eyes told she couldn’t be stopped. Not even by him.

And all he could do was close his eyes. Go away as far inside as possible. Away from the frightened whispers of handmaidens clinging to each other. Away from the warmth of Taena’s mouth and her tears wetting his cock.

The darkness had always been his sanctuary. It muffled screams. Washed away fear and bitterness. In it was the promise of erasing the knowledge that unless it was Cersei who screamed, no Queensguard would be rushing into the chamber.

But there had been no darkness. Nor silence. Even with his eyes squeezed shut as Cersei rode him, he still felt the insistent presses of her mouth. The little bones of her hands digging in his face as she forced kiss upon kiss on him. Tremors took hold of his body and allowed only the shallowest of breaths as horror dawned on him.

It was horror he had discovered at sixteen. When his Kingsguard cloak was at its whitest.

He and an older knight, Ser Jonothor Darry had been standing guard outside Rhaella’s chambers that night. Aerys had not been long inside when a pained, tearful cry reached their ears.

It was his mind playing tricks on him, Jaime had thought. For it was late in the night and he was still not used to missing sleep to stand guard. Ser Jonothon did not seem to have heard. He continued to stare straight ahead.

_“Stop! Don’t—please! It hurts—you’re hurting me. Stop!”_

Jaime turned, hand on the hilt of a half-drawn sword when Ser Jonothon slipped between him and the door. He shook his head at the young knight as Rhaella screamed for help this time.

“What are you doing?” Jaime demanded. “He’s hurting her.”

“Yes. He is.”

When he didn’t move, Jaime, disbelieving at his reaction, protested, “She needs our help. We are sworn to protect her still.”

 _“Somebody—don’t!”_ Followed by a crash. Goblets and plates likely falling. Then the sure blows of fists rained on a helpless body.

“Move away from the door, Ser Jonothon.”

“Stay your blade, young lion. And go back to your station.” When Jaime refused to move, the older knight continued, “Yes, we are sworn to protect her too. But not from him. Never from him.”

“It’s not right!”

This time, Ser Jonothon snarled, “When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey. Step away.”

That fucking cloak. The whiteness of it had enthralled him as a boy but once it was on his shoulders, it didn’t take long to learn the nasty truths of it. How there was no honor bestowed at all in becoming Kingsguard, but a way for Aerys to rob Tywin of his heir. That every vow he’d taken as a knight to protect the weak would be broken for the many nights that Aerys abused Rhaella. _Too many vows._ He never forgot each and every one. Each memory was bitter.

“That dream might just come true, dear sister. I wish to speak to you about the food sent to the smallfolk.”

Cersei scoffed. “What do you they want this time? Lemoncakes? Sugared plums? Wine?” She tipped the goblet to her smiling lips. “Is that where you were so early today?”

“Some of us still intend to help and protect the realm.”

“And you think helping the realm is to hear sob stories from the smallfolk? When you could be readying our soldiers for when that whore tries to claim my throne?”

“So now you accept it as a certainty. Strange how one word from Littlefinger is enough to sway you to a reality I’ve been telling you about for years.”

“He has no cause to lie and betray. He’s loyal to House Lannister. And he’s given me proof.”

“And I’m not? Your own brother? Your husband? You can’t be so blind as to think a mere servant is smart enough to draw detailed plans of the Keep?”

“Anyone who isn’t with us is an enemy.” She drawled. “Don’t make me start thinking that about you, Jaime. I’ve been generous despite all your questions regarding my leadership since the day I sat on that throne. I have every right to do unspeakables to you for continuing to deny me your seed.”

His eyes dropped below her stomach. “You already got it.”

“Yes. I had to get it what is mine being queen and wife.” She made a face. “You should have bathed before coming to see me. You stink of despair and death.”

“That’s what bothers you. Not that I might get ill?”

She ignored him.

Then there was another sip of the wine she couldn’t live without. If he forced her to make a choice between that blasted chair or wine, it would be similar to asking which child should live.

“You’re sending spoiled food. People are already sick from this mysterious disease and having worms and maggots served with carrots and potatoes will not heal anyone. Tell me this was some careless mistake of the kitchens and not your edict.” When she didn’t respond, he pressed, “Cersei. The children are sick. Getting sicker as we speak.”

“And you wish for what? An army to stop the disease? Who would defend the castle when Daenerys attacks? For all we know the traders and merchants from Essos coming here are her spies. Spies already diseased and aim to decimate us. The people of King’s Landing are right to burn them.”

“That’s your solution.” He couldn’t believe it. “Burn them all.”

Words he never thought to hear again, let alone speak.

“You want certain things from me that I’m not willing to give. You don’t see the world like I do. I’d rather lose the aimless, lazy smallfolk than any one of my soldiers. We have no gold. Our resources depleted. The soldiers you want to patrol the streets will be exposing themselves to the disease. Who will then defend us?”

He looked at her clothes pointedly. “It didn’t take all the gold we have to slaughter all silkworms for that dress, did it?”

“Stop. Just stop it,” she suddenly demanded. “I’m _bored_ of your prattling.”

“You should have Qyburn go to Flea Bottom to assess and start coming up with a cure.”

“He’s _my_ Hand. He goes no further than the Red Keep unless I wish it.”

“He shouldn’t be your fucking Hand in the first place, Cersei.” He couldn’t hide his disgust anymore. “He shouldn’t have anything to do with the Small Council.”

“He wouldn’t if only you’d agreed to be my Hand in the first place! Now he’s become too important.”

“And me?”

“I have no time for your childish jealousy, Jaime. But if it you want reassurances—” Her smile was serene.” “He has no interest fucking me unless I’m a corpse”

“He will be overwhelmed by choices once the disease goes beyond Flea Bottom.”

She went to him, put a hand on his cheek. He almost flinched. “You think you know everything. What happened to the trust you once had in me? We have the world at our feet. It’s all we’ve ever wanted. Instead of being closer you’ve gone farther and farther away. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I’ve never budged from where I am,” he whispered as she slid in front of him, a thousand graces in one swift, nothing of a movement. Her breasts rubbed his chest. Through his breeches and her silks he felt the slight mound of her cunt. His eyes lowered as she held him more firmly. “All the better to see you.”

She drew him down and he turned away. Her lips landed on his chin. Hissing, she flung wine to his face. He quickly raised a hand, eyes blinking through the sting.

“Go on. Honor me as you wish,” she seethed.

Her eyes were manic, wild. He lowered his hand. “You have no honor.”

He strode to a table and grabbed one of the silk napkins to wipe his face. She circled him, furious and radiant in her emeralds and silver armor with roaring lions. Dragging the cloth down his nose to mouth then neck, he gave her a long look.

She met his stare. Resentment rather than courage made her. He heard it in every word she spoke next.

“I should have you thrown to the Black Cells.”

He gave his face a final pat. “Threats. Jewels. Armor. You do look like a queen, Cersei. Beyond that, I can’t be certain.”

He flung the cloth at her feet and walked away. As he grasped the door handle, she called him.

“If you still have doubts about me as queen, see me when I collect debt from that servant. What’s her name?”

Jaime felt himself go cold. Cersei smiled. “Ilda, isn’t it? Yes. Oh, yes. _Ilda._ Pool little Ilda. You’d best hope all she’s committed is treason.”

******  
The cold and the possible threat of catching a mysterious, infectious disease did not deter the lords and ladies of King’s Landing. Fire from braziers that struggled weakly against the cold seemed unnecessary as warm bodies filled the throne room.

Winter had taken the brunt of blame as food grew more scarce in the Seven Kingdoms. But the lords and ladies unwittingly provided another answer to this unfortunate riddle. The fattest among them remained rotund, some grown even more so. Others, reed-thin before winter began, emerged round-cheeked or with a couple of new chins.

Such bodies called for heaps upon heaps of silk, velvet, and fur. For every fat lord and his wife, entire packs of beasts were slaughtered for their fur.

Jaime sat with Petyr Baelish and Qyburn, their chairs flanking the Iron Throne. He glanced at himself and smirked. He had not changed out of his clothes from the visit to the motherhouse.

Qyburn was in one of his long, black robes that made him look like a hunched crow. Baelish was in throat to toe plum, excepting black boots that shone like thunderbolt. His cape matched his clothes and embroidered with mockingbirds. It was clasped at his throat with a jeweled version of the bird, silver with amethyst eyes.

How like his sister to keep people waiting. _Likely having her maids scrounge for more jewels, maybe for her cunt._

“My lord.” Petyr addressed him. He nodded at the crowd. “Quite something, wouldn’t you say? One would think we’re about to have a grand ball. Everyone is dressed in their best. The air throbs with anticipation.”

“Yes, not so unlike beasts gathered for a kill. I would think they’ve had enough food. I can certainly point a few fingers at those who’ve clearly been hoarding. But there’s no satisfying cravings, is there?”

“Wanting is without end, my lord.”

Jaime glanced at the other man’s clothes. “I have no doubt.”

“You don’t appear to be wanting, if I may say so. A privilege, wouldn’t you say?”

“A privilege you would know too. Lord Paramount of the Trident. Lord of Harrenhal. Lord Protector of the Eyrie and the Vale of Arryn.” He grinned. “Did I miss anything?”

“For now, no. But you appear to be in need of something warm, my lord.” Petyr’s gloved hand touched the mockingbird jewel. “Your sister would be here shortly, yes?”

“Right now, I wouldn’t mind a blast of winter.”

“Ah. You don’t mind the cold then, my lord?”

“Do you? That’s quite the challenge living in the Vale.”

Petyr smiled. Jaime thought his eyes looked dead. “Not at all. I keep myself warm enough.” He caressed the cloak. “But if I may, my lord, perhaps you could rethink your stance on warmth. Imagine upon my arrival here hearing of this mysterious disease that’s taking out the smallfolk. If not for your sister’s summons I would have willed myself to fly back to the Vale.”

“I doubt if the queen will even allow you such thoughts. What the queen wants, the queen gets.”

“And you, my lord? Do you not want anything?” Petyr chuckled. “Perhaps a new coat?”

Jaime chuckled. “A coat will only show what I have, Lord Baelish. Not who I am. You would know that.”

“Ah, my lord. Everyone knows who you are.”

“Hmm. Perhaps.” He yanked a loose thread from his coat. “People are seeing more of who I am than usual, I think.”

“I thought only your sister is allowed that.”

“She is queen, Lord Baelish. If you will look half as lovely as she in a dress, perhaps you’ll know that privilege too. But why would you bother wanting to see more of me when you have so many nubile men and women? I believe you could make carpets out of their bodies. Winter will never come for you.”

The knowing, sly smile Petyr’s face froze then dropped. Jaime winked. It was hardly a secret in court that Petyr loathed any reminder of his ownership of several brothels.

The heavy doors opened, revealing Cersei and her Queensguard. All the smiles in the room fell. Breath seemingly snuffed out. Jaime, Qyburn and Petyr stood up.

Cersei glided into the room. Resplendent. Shimmering. All eyes on her. Everyone stunned into silence by her beauty. The dreariness of winter forgotten with the gold of her hair and all the emeralds of the continent on her person.

She climbed up the steps to the Iron Throne, sending Jaime a scalding look upon seeing he had not changed his worn clothes. She sat down. Jaime, Petyr and Qyburn did the samel

Six of her Queensguard stood at the steps fronting the throne. The Mountain positioned himself a step below her seat. He blocked Petyr.

“Tell me,” she hissed at Jaime. “What pleasure do you get out of embarrassing me?”

“Believe it or not, sweet sister, you don’t guide all my actions,” he whispered back. He smirked at the audience. “Don’t keep them waiting.”

“You will pay for this, Jaime.” She warned before turning to the crowd.

“Lords and ladies of King’s Landing. It wasn’t too long ago that we were in this very room, speaking of dangers plaguing the city. Winter has come for us. But it is not the end of us. There is scarcity and struggle, but strife shall have no place in it. Not while I rule the seven kingdoms. As your queen, you have my word that I will not tolerate lawlessness of any kind. Any action against the prevalence of good and justice, by a prince, lord, handmaiden, servant, will be given the harshest of punishments. I shall always defend Westeros, for its people. People born and raised and continue living here. For as long as I am queen.”

Jaime watched her hand caress the sword-shaped armrest of the throne, as if drawing power from it. “Bring her in,” she ordered.

The doors opened again. Two Lannister guards swooped in, dragging Ilda into the room.

Jaime took one look at the servant and knew what had to be done.

“Cersei, this is unacceptable,” he said in a low voice. He refused to look at the girl any further. She was in a rag of a dress that had been torn, exposing a small breast and a bruised nipple. One eye was half-closed and swollen. The rest of her face, her body, was purple. Her firm body, once strong from hard work, was now hunched.

The throne room was suddenly too hot. The hushed conversations screams. Jaime refused to stare at the servant girl but he’d seen enough to be stalked by random images of her battered face and body to know he couldn’t go away inside. Not so easily this time.

The blood on her pale hair. The split in her thick lower lip. The mark of purple fingers around her throat. Boot prints on her torn clothes. The cut still bleeding on her knee. Her eyes. Pale blue crossing to white.

Ilda was whimpering. Struggling against the guards dragging her to the stand. The sound of her feet scraping and trying to dig into the carpet brought his eyes back to her. There was nothing he could do. She was hauled to the stand, her waist hitting the top shelf and drawing a wet grunt and cry from her swollen mouth.

 _There was nothing he could do._ Just like when Rickard Stark burned alive in his armor. Just like when Brandon Stark was strangled alive trying to reach for the sword that might have saved them both.

“Why do you sweat?”

He almost jumped from Cersei’s soft voice. She gave him a look of disgust. “You’re far from done embarrassing me, aren’t you.”

His tongue felt like wet cotton, too heavy and too big for his mouth. When she got no answer from him, she hissed under her breath then faced Ilda. She made no effort to hide her disdain, staring at the girl as if she had rolled in shit.

“You,” she said. Ilda blinked at her with one undamaged eye. The swollen one couldn’t even flutter, Jaime discovered when he finally risked a look in her direction. “You will answer my questions and that of my small council. You will give us the truth.”

Ilda nodded weakly. Cersei was displeased. _“Speak.”_

“I—I—” Ilda cleared her throat, a hacking, dry sound. “I will, your grace.” Her voice was feeble.

“Why do you have a letter addressed to Daenerys Targaryen?”

Ilda burst into tears, shaking her head. “Your grace, that’s not true at all—”

“Do you imply that the queen lies?” Petyr demanded.

“Lying whore!” Someone yelled.

“Queen Cersei, you should just burn her!”

“Yes! Burn her!”

 _Gods._ Jaime didn’t just hear the voices. They were _in_ him. Clawing at him. Tearing him from the inside. The faces around him blurred. Indistinguishable. Except for the gold of Cersei’s hair and their emeralds that suddenly shone too brightly. And Ilda’s face. At first it _was_ her face and then—

“Silence!” Cersei was shouting but sounded far away. The entire room seemed to have faded away except for the face only he could see.

Limp mess of wheat-colored hair. The spill of freckles on a face made to be ridiculed. Those eyes. The bluest of blue. Like all the sapphires in the world had been poured into her eyes to make that distinct, vivid shade. It was the only kindness the gods have given her—eyes of immeasurable beauty. Round. Guileless. Eyes that saw parts of him he thought were either long dead or never existed at all.

“Your grace.” Petyr spoke. The man had no idea how Jaime could have murdered him for taking him out of that spell. Suddenly he was back in the throne room. Feeling the press of the carved, wooden chair etched with lions on his back, under his fingertips. The lavender scent from Cersei’s skin.

And Ilda. Bruised. Broken. Her teeth biting her bloody lower lip. Hands clutching at her tattered dress to preserve what little modesty was left. As Jaime stared at her, helpless and hating himself for knowing what had to be done and knowing he couldn’t bloody do anything, he saw that she was missing some fingernails.

_The guards had removed her nails._

“Lord Baelish,” Cersei was speaking through gritted teeth. The crowd had quieted but she was whispering. “You’re new to my small council. If I wish for advice, you’ll know. Have I asked for your advice?”

“Ah, your grace—”

“Did I.”

“No. No, you did not, your grace.”

“Ilda.” Cersei raised her voice. “You have not answered my question. Must I repeat it?”

“Y-your grace, I—” Ilda turned the crowd, clearly looking for a sympathetic face. For help. Mercy. There was none.

“I-I don’t know how.”

“You don’t know yet it was in your possession. Did you write it?”

She sobbed. “I-I did not—”

“You don’t know why such a letter was in your possession and you say you did not write it,” Petyr said, exasperated.

Cersei scowled at her. “Do you know how to read and write?”

Ilda nodded. “I-I do, your grace. But-but not that well.”

“Of course that’s what you’ll say,” Petyr retorted. “You will claim to have little knowledge of reading and writing.”

“I speak the truth!” Ilda protested.

“Be quiet,” Cersei ordered.

“Your grace, please—”

“Unless I or other members of my small council ask you a question, you will remain quiet. Do it again and it will be the last time you speak, do you understand?”

Jaime felt sick. Going away inside will not spare him. He needed to be farthest from this room. From everyone. Ilda, one untouched eye wide, nodded, clutching the cloak. _She means to end her._

“Lord Baelish,” Cersei suddenly said. “How did you know that Ilda has been spying?”

Ilda opened her mouth but only a whimper came out. Petyr straightened in his seat and answered. “Your grace, despite being far from King’s Landing until recently, I’ve always kept my ear to the ground for the good of the seven kingdoms. Word reached me of a betrayer in the Keep. I was delayed in answering your summons because I wished to make sure. Once I had a name, I had this woman named Ilda arrested.”

“And the letter?”

“A fortunate coincidence. Almost as if the Seven wished for it to be found, if I may say so.” Petyr shook his head at Ilda. “She claims to not read or write very well. Of course she will. Even if we put her to the test she can pretend to miswrite her letters or not know how to read all words. She has to protect her true master, doesn’t she?”

“I do not pretend!” Ilda suddenly cried out. “As for my master it’s—"

“Be quiet!” Cersei snarled.

“I don’t know how to read and write as well as you lords and ladies. But one thing I do know is Lord Baelish ordered me to seduce Lord Addam Marbrand—”

“Lies. Lies!” Petyr growled. “You would drag the good name of every lord to save yourself. And if I’m going to have someone seduce the heir of Ashemark it won’t be someone dragged from the gutter as you!”

“You ordered me! You said—you said—”

“Enough.” Cersei roared, getting to her feet. “I warned you. You’ve done nothing but collect transgressions from the moment you’ve entered this room. I will not tolerate it any longer. A betrayal of my household is a betrayal of Westeros. Do it,” she ordered the Lannister guards. “Bring her to me.”

 _Bring her to me._ Wide-eyed, hearing the sharp intake of his own breath, he could only watch Lannister guards snatching Ilda from the stand. They were a blur of crimson and gold, bruises and skin, hands. Something flew in the air. Ilda’s dress.

The six Queensguard stepped aside to let Gregor Clegane pass. Jaime heard every thud under his boots. Saw the slow swish of his cloak hanging from shoulders wide and powerful as mountains. He knew what was going to happen and _could only watch._

He gripped the lion armrests as Clegane drew his sword. The sound of it pulled from the scabbard was almost a song and moved high in the air like poetry. It was longer and wider than any weapon Jaime had ever seen. Blade thicker than his arm. The length from tip to pommel half of him. Clegane wielded it as if to slay the ultimate enemy.

Then it slashed down, severing in one motion Ilda’s head from her body. While Lannister guards continued holding it up as blood sprouted from her throat, her head flew straight for Jaime.

Her face was still warm on his cheek. Her hair smelled of blood and shit.

The gasps and cries from the audience hit him like a tidal wave. Suddenly he could hear everything. Smell and even taste it all—the sweat, the metallic tang of blood in the air, even the decaying bits of animal skin left on the furs. It felt like an attack on all sides but his eyes were only on Ilda’s head rolling from his feet then down the velvet steps, leaving trails of blood and bits of her spine.

He tore his eyes away, still hoping for that pathetic, foolish wish to go away inside to come true. As he turned, he saw Clegane’s sword slicing into Ilda’s body, parting them like doors.

Ribbons of bright red entrails spilled and widened the river at his feet. Then he yanked out a red beating thing, crowned with tangles of veins and dripping more blood. He threw it to the terrified crowd.

At last, the will returned to him. Some of it. He turned to Cersei. She was looking at him, the purse in her lips halting the spread of a smirk. On her cheeks was the flush he saw only in bed. When she was soft and lost in pleasure.

_She would have him tonight._

Just like Rhaella. How every time after Aerys fed someone to the fire he spent the night with her. Whether she liked it or not. She had never liked it. She had never stopped screaming for help. 

“I can’t believe you.”

In finding his voice, he found his feet. He stood up and marched down the steps. He was done.

“Ser Gregor.”

There was no explicit command. Just her voice, soft yet clear, uttering the name. Jaime thought nothing of it until an ungodly force hit the back of his head.

He fell into darkness. 

*******

Ice-cold water took Jaime from the darkness. He gasped as another wave hit him. Hardly impeded by the lack of light, he quickly identified the source of the sound and movement and found his hand wrapped around a skinny throat.

“My lord.” Spoke a familiar, whisper-soft voice that sounded like dry leaves. “Please. Unhand the boy. He was only acting on my orders. And I the queen’s.”

“Qyburn?” Jaime was confused. He released the boy’s neck he was gripping, shoving him away. He heard a grunt and the thump of a body hitting the ground. Just then he saw a torch lit, a jagged sun in the night of the hell he was in.

“Where the fuck am I?” He squinted at the strange old man standing in front of the cell. _My cell._ He moved, tripping on the bucket the boy had dropped when he’d grabbed him. He hated how this ousted maester in his long robes was a comforting sight.

“The Black Cells, my lord. But the queen wishes you returned to her side once you’ve awakened from your. . .exertions.”

“My exertions.” He looked up and saw more darkness. He hated how the only light of this world was one of Cersei’s sycophants. “Tell me. What has happened to her body.”

“It has gone where it has gone, my lord.”

A Lannister guard appeared and unlocked the cell. But Jaime didn’t move.

“My lord?”

“What does she want with me?”

Qyburn smiled. Jaime supposed it was reassuring but he’d rather remain in the cell and be eaten by rats than be near it. “My lord, contrary to how it often appears, I know not the inner workings of the queen’s mind. I am honored to have gained her trust but there are doorways I am not allowed, nor do I wish them opened. I am her servant and merely a man who wishes to learn further the intricacies of our bodies and perhaps, our souls.”

He snorted. “No would suffice.”

It was a long climb out of the darkness and towards little light. As they crossed the courtyard, Qyburn looked up at the pale, milky rays of the sun that had managed to pierce through the dark sky. “It won’t be long before the long night is upon us.”

“Isn’t it already,” Jaime retorted, pulling up the collar of his coat. Forgetting how old and worn the leather was, the force of his hand ended up ripping it. He stared at that bit in disbelief then tossed it away. Qyburn, who had stopped to see the source of the sound, chuckled.

“It’s time for a new coat, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”

“If I can eat it, why not.” Remembering his visit to the motherhouse, he demanded, “You had to know. You had to know the children are being given rotten food.” 

“My lord, please.” Qyburn paused and looked at him. “That is not something I should hear.”

“Because you’ll be forced to tell my sister? Don’t worry. She already knows. Just as she knows you should be trying to make a cure.”

Qyburn shook his head, refusing to be baited. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

Clegane waited for them in front of Cersei’s chamber. His armor was still speckled with blood. As well as his boots. When he opened the doors, Jaime saw his fingers were covered in dried blood as well.

“A doorway I don’t have permission to go through at the moment, my lord,” Qyburn said.

“You’re lucky.”

Gone were the emeralds that had adorned Cersei’s hair, as well as the armor and dress. But she was still dressed sumptuously, in a robe of heavy silk brocade. It hung open, revealing the whisper-soft sleeping gown underneath. Round, thrusting breasts with tight nipples jiggled as she walked to him.

They stared at each other. Not too long ago, he would have grabbed her. Torn the fucking clothes off her body and taken her mouth, her breasts. Pushed his cock inside her. Fucked her through the night. After a lifetime of stolen kisses and frantic fucking in the dark, of looking over their shoulders, they had that freedom. But it cost too much.

And they were Lannisters still paying that growing debt.

“How was your stay in the Black Cells? Too brief?”

“Was it supposed to be a vacation? Not enough sun, truth be told. And too cold.”

“But memorable?”

“Should it be?”

Cersei ran a hand down his chest. She smelled of soft lavender. She tipped her chin up, gazing at him. “I was defending the kingdom.”

“What defense is there in brutalizing the girl? Having her butchered by your monster?” He took her hand and looked in her eyes, as if to kiss her. Instead, he shook his head and moved away.

“She was spying.”

“You have only Baelish’s word and that letter. Did you even take a good look at it? Only someone with a keen understanding and knowledge of the Keep could ever do a detailed drawing. Ilda would have been better off drawing the tiles of the floors she kneels on.” He sighed. “Knelt on.”

“Why do you know her name? And why does she know Addam?”

“He fucked her on his last visit here. Nothing more.” Because Cersei was still looking at him with distrust, he remarked, “Who knew it would take one word from Petyr Baelish for you to be convinced about Daenerys Targaryen? Had I known I would have had him summoned here much earlier.”

He went to a table where food and wine waited. He grabbed some of the crusty bread. Perfectly salted with just a dash of sugar.

“You should remain in the Black Cells longer. What lesson you were supposed to learn has clearly been lost.”

“Cersei, I never got that lesson.”

“You are so ungrateful.” There it was. Her anger. The indignation that made her eyes burn like wildfire. “You think you know everything. Your cock doesn’t entitle you to knowledge. You were nothing but a glorified bodyguard to a king, Jaime. A mad king. You should’ve taken that fucking throne after stabbing him. You wanted it all along, didn’t you?”

“I never wanted it! Even father never wanted it. He wanted none of us on it, you fool.”

She slapped him. He chuckled, rubbing the sting of her touch with his palm. He was past fury, now.

“You will lose everything you’ve ever fought for if you keep tearing us apart, Jaime.”

“Is that a threat?” He asked innocently. “Or a promise?”

Instead of receiving another hateful look, Cersei turned away and went to her desk. She stood next to it, her expression unreadable.

Jaime was immediately on guard.

“I have something for you. I thought to wait for our nameday but you won’t be here for it. I doubt if you deserve it.”

“Because I’ll be back in the Black Cells? Or will I be dead?”

She smirked. “Someday, that tongue of yours will be your undoing. I suggest you hold on to it. There are ways its wickedness will be more appreciated. I do. You’re just as talented as you are with a sword.”

It was so different hearing almost those exact words from the lips of a woman that had always been his half, his completion. She spoke it as fact, knowingly, touched with arrogance. He preferred the reproach that laced the tone of the speaker that warned him about his tongue first. A reproach that came with an ugly scowl.

He hesitated then went to the desk, keeping himself at arm’s length from her.

On the desk was a scabbard of black and gold, with details on the surface resembling the mane of a lion and scattered with rubies. Below it was the golden pommel of a sword in the shape of a lion’s head. It had rubies for eyes.

Jaime risked a glance at Cersei, who stood with her hands clasped together, unsmiling.

He picked it up, drawing out the sword.

The light danced on the sword. He turned it, noting the ripples on the blade that were the colors of night and dark, very dark blood. A brush of his thumb on the edge was enough to draw blood. The pain was like fire rather than a mild sting. The little dot of blood that had dripped on the sword fell in one of the ripples.

The light was just playing tricks on him, Jaime thought. But the red of the ripples seemed brighter now.

“Perhaps the only good deed our traitorous little brother did as Hand was doing as father commanded. Father was good in finding ways for us to benefit from the death of the honorable Ned Stark,” Cersei said.

Jaime almost dropped the sword. He couldn’t let go. “Who died on your orders.”

“Not mine. How could you?” Cersei demanded. “I did as I was told. I tried to persuade Joffrey to have Ned take the black. I didn’t know he was going to call for his head!”

Jaime put the sword back in the scabbard. Cersei continued speaking. “There were two swords. Apparently Ned’s was so big there was enough for two. One was to go to Joffrey, according to father.” She hugged herself. _The one child she truly mourned._ “The other—the one you hold, father was waiting until he laid eyes on you again. So he could give it to you himself.”

“That was a long time ago. Why am I only receiving it just now?”

“Because to go through father’s things is to be reminded all over again that he’s gone. Hate me, envy me for the throne, Jaime, but if I could exchange that for his life, I would.” She took his hand, weaving her fingers through his. Then she kissed it. “I would. I really would.”

“Cersei.” The warmth of her mouth could still break him. But he was tired. Too many battles had been fought today. And a life was lost—taken in ways that went beyond cruel and evil. He closed his hand and lowered it to his side. “The night has gone too long already.”

When it was clear he wouldn’t reciprocate her passion, she sent him a look that promised danger. _He was going to pay for what he’d done._

“Before you skulk back to your chambers, take the sword with you. And this.” She took a rolled parchment from the desk with a wax seal. “Perhaps this will make you feel better. I do listen, Jaime.”

“What’s this?”

“My orders to Lady Brienne to begin preparing the Stormlands for Daenerys Targaryen. You will leave for Tarth at first light tomorrow. I suggest you use our time apart to think about your recent actions. I swore to protect Westeros from things that would endanger its way of life. Do not force me to break that vow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did I tell you, readers? REPERCUSSIONS!
> 
> In canon, the motherhouse is the equivalent of a convent or an abbey. I still keep that function in this AU but also made it as an orphanage. 
> 
> JAIME IS FINALLY GOING TO TARTH!!!! TO BRIENNE!!!!!


	13. Jaime IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The queen should just slaughter us all. At least we’re relieved of the burden of protecting a kingdom that would reward our failures by taking the only light of our lives,” she said, biting her lip. “Each time I believe I have done what is good, the people I’m supposed to protect await punishment.”  
> “I will not let her do this. You know that, don’t you?”  
> “I have no reason to doubt you, Jaime. But do you think you’re enough?” She turned to him then, revealing tears on her cheeks. “On one side is the dragon queen. She will not hesitate to burn us all. Your sister on the other. What makes you think she will forgive you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.  
> It's here.  
> This gargantuan update.  
> Best to clear your schedule for entire weekend, I think! 
> 
> ******  
> The length of this chapter will not be to everyone's liking. Long chapters aren't popular and this comes in at more than fifty pages. Should I have tried to shorten, cut, revise? I tried. My bestie catherineflowers tried. She really did. Some of her advice I took but the rest. . .I just felt that this being a definitive chapter regarding Jaime in the story, there were a LOT of scenes i couldn't let go. Not to mention the smut! Let's face it- my own excitement at writing this and FINALLY reuniting Jaime and Brienne got the better of me. Did I overdo it? I most definitely did. But no regrets. 
> 
> I do apologize that it took me over a month to update. You won't be getting the usual three-chapter update from me since this one is so fucking long already! And you have lives! Life got in the way a bit too in writing this. Can I just say online anything in connection to school is a nightmare? Ugh!
> 
> So please bear with me for the length. The following chapters won't be as long, I promise! My thanks again to catherineflowers for being so incredibly patient and understanding what I needed, and was so pigheaded in doing!

Chapter Thirteen: Jaime IV

Jaime yearned for blue.

If not for his own memories swimming in the Sunset Sea, he would declare the blue of the sea of songs and poems falsehood. From the moment _Sweet Cersei_ sailed at the first white winter light of the sun, the sea was either the color of storm or steel. The waves were swords clashing upon each other. At night, in his cabin where the lamp swayed from the tumultuous motions of the water and his stomach turned and flipped, he saw The Mountain’s broadsword slicing the servant woman’s head from her throat before cleaving her body into precise halves.

In his dreams blood was an ocean without end, and he was always falling in the crimson, unfathomable depths. 

Seventeen days had passed. Probably the most treacherous days anyone in this ship had. No one, not even the captain, had gotten much sleep.

Three storms they’d encountered so far. The first blasts of winds coupled with violent parries of water by the Drowned God. The second saw cracks of light in the sky, the latter falling ceaselessly from the treads of giants. The third had sky indistinguishable from ocean as the ship was tossed and pounded from every direction. It had become a mere plaything in the endless torrential game of wind and rain.

This last storm took two lives from the ship’s crew. Three of Jaime’s guards joined them quickly.

When the storm had at last begun to ebb, Jaime still remained in his cabin. He was queasy still from the relentless rocking of the ship. He drifted in and out of sleep but dreams of drowning in blood still plagued him. Despite the cold, he woke up drenched in sweat.

What he would give, he thought after another long night of nightmares, for blue. Brilliant. Serene. The color of life. Blue. _Sapphires._

Early one morning found Jaime staring at the sword his sister had given him. _No, father’s last gift, if true._ Under the gentle sway of the lamp, he caressed the ripples on the blade that were colors of night and blood.

Tywin had been as desperate for Valyrian steel for their House almost as much as he was for his legacy to endure. He had resorted to trying to buy these ancestral blades from other smaller Houses but none would sell—for how often did you get the satisfaction of refusing him without repercussions? A piece of Valyria and heirs, either of which could easily be attainable, eluded House Lannister.

The sword in Jaime’s hand was the finest he’d laid eyes on. The ripples and the sharpness of it made were testaments to beauty and savagery all at once.

He was expected to wield it for his House but doubted if doing so meant to be just. A strange thought. Justice was as foreign a concept as being destitute for him. But the sword, he had to admit, seemed to call to be used only for just purposes.

The hilt Jaime traced with his fingers. The detailed lion’s mane and ruby eyes told it was House Lannister’s. Anyone with a pair of eyes would think the same. Yet, as he picked it up and laid it on his palm, it didn’t feel right. His wasn’t the hand for it.

 _A sword once wielded by an honorable hand and now in the hands those without._ He sheathed it back in the scabbard. The Starks were dead. Or for their own good, vanished. Even the whereabouts of Ned’s bastard was unknown. There was no Stark to claim the sword anymore. Still it felt wrong for it to be House Lannister’s, especially with the manner they acquired it.

 _You made a mistake in putting the lives of your daughters on a man such as me, Lady Catelyn._ The truth was no pinprick. He had thought her desperation sweet but once she released him as promised, he knew he couldn’t break his vow. He just couldn’t. Her being a mother, what gratitude he had, if there was any, had nothing to do with it. He’d made a vow and he had to see it through. It was the only choice.

A proper fool he was thinking to keep it. Redemption was futile. Sansa Stark was gone, never to be seen again after the riots. Arya vanished long before.

Better for the girls to be dead than alive. _Death was a shield_. If they were still alive somewhere, the world would just chip away at what innocence they had left. It was better to have lost much and died than to keep living and seeing things slip through fingers. Or witness your world slowly fall apart.

And yet . . if there was a trace of either girl. . a fragment of bone. . .even a thread of ribbon. . .Jaime’s smile was bitter. He would return that fucking thing to Winterfell.

Winterfell. The last time the world felt right. The godsforsaken ice world in the fucking north. 

He sighed and put the sword away, placing it on a hook near the bed. Of late, his mind returned to the past even outside of idle moments. During his captivity he kept himself alive with memories of Cersei. Now unchained and in his palm the love he’d fought and killed for, his thoughts went to another.

 _Brienne._ His thumb caressed the hilt, circling the round tip. It seemed she had been right there in the throne room during Ilda’s heinous murder. Had he not been not aware of how she filled his thoughts lately, he would think himself mad. He turned and went to bed, picking up a half-full goblet from the table.

Random things called her to mind. The gold of the hilt was close to the color of the flames in his chambers in Harrenhal, and the soft glow lent to the room that limned Brienne’s body. As his eyes traveled around the chambers too grand with their silks and velvets in the warship, they fell on the half-open trunk by the door. It held the armor Cersei had gifted him for the trip. It was stuffed with hay to keep its shape.

The hay’s color and texture were not unlike the rough mess that grazed Brienne’s shoulders. Nor was it too far from the thick bush he’d first glimpsed through fevered eyes in the Harrenhal baths.

His tongue swiped across the papery skin of his dry lips while thinking of the clusters and tangles between her thighs. A sip of wine gave relief but a temporary one. Very temporary. The burst of the faint memory of sun-warmed grapes and their sweetness fired up the memory of her taste. What remained of the wine he swirled in the goblet, reminded by the deep rose color of the inner folds of her cunt, glistening with her first burst of desire.

 _Brienne._ Once his enemy, his captor. And now someone he longed. When he sparred with his men back in King’s Landing, he felt her. As if she were watching him, sapphire eyes assessing his moves, ugly face in a grimace. He felt her closest to him when he wielded a sword, the clashing steel rousing the song of their first fight in the battlefield.

She had come out of nowhere, sneaking up on him on a steed a couple of hands taller than his own. A force not unlike a crashing boulder had smacked into him, hurling his body straight toward Addam too. They flew and fell in a heap of armor and blended grunts and groans on the ground. Addam got the brunt of it—the hard ground under him, Jaime and two horses crushing him.

“Fucking bloody seven hells,” Addam was groaning under his helmet. It had turned, obscuring his sight. Jaime removed it and checked his bannerman for any cuts and other injuries. Their horses righted themselves then galloped away.

“Can you stand?” Jaime grasped him by the wrist, pulling hard. Addam grunted, managing to stand halfway before his eyes rolled to the back of his head. He fell.

“Shit.” Jaime muttered.

He staggered to his feet and saw the knight again. Astride a brown stallion straight out of the songs and sagas of heroes he’d been told as a child, he stared in awe as the knight circled them. The sun gleamed on the tallest pair of black boots wrapped around the longest legs he had ever seen.

He snapped out of the trance long enough to feel the press of his helmet on his skull, as if determined to burrow in it. He pulled it off, discovered the huge dent that had pressed on him. He tossed it to the ground then regarded the knight.

 _Kill,_ his blood chanted. _Kill. Kill. Kill._

He unsheathed his sword.

He had it raised high and ready to strike when the knight suddenly swung off the horse and landed on two feet on the ground in a single, fluid move. He swore he felt the earth shake. Then the knight removed his helmet too.

First revealed was the tail of a pale, limp braid, followed by the strong, white line of a neck, the curve of a big ear. Then the helmet was completely off. Wide in the jaw, cracked lips so thick they reminded him of cushion, a long nose with a crooked ridge. The tip was round and thick.

As Jaime winced from the most unfortunate pieces of features assembled on a blotchy canvas, he glimpsed eyes bluer than the sky. Bluer than the sea in summer.

It seemed all the variations of blue in the world had gone into eyes that flashed like stars and jewels.

The knight, wide-shouldered and taller than him, had all the indications of being a man. It was a _knight._ Until those eyes. Some men braided their hair. But no man had eyes like that—round, clear, and gleaming like sapphires. A glimpse was enough to make him momentarily forget other known colors.

Through the screams and bloodshed, Jaime Lannister chuckled. “Renly and Robb clearly have been scraping the barrel to have a fucking beast of a woman in their army.”

Two bright pink spots suddenly popped in her cheeks. He laughed again and laughed harder as she held her sword high. In the same position as his. He turned back to Addam, who was still sprawled and now drooling. Jaime’s shoulders continued to shake with mirth.

“F-fight me.”

He smiled at her over his shoulder. “I save maidens, not kill them. Walk away, my lady. There are other ways to have a sword thrust in you. Ways you’ll prefer, I’ve no doubt.”

“Kingslayer.” As Jaime’s smile froze, she smirked. Gods above, those teeth could saw through oak. “That’s right. I-I know who you are.”

He slowly turned to her. “You think to put a sword in me?”

“N-Not just one.”

She was stammering but her fighting stance was true. Jaime stepped toward her.

“You foolish, hulking beast.”

And then he struck, lightning igniting his body. She side-stepped and struck back, spinning on her big feet without leaving the spot she was on. He stood back, his smile sharp like a knife as he circled her. Looking. Assessing. Waiting.

She mirrored his movements. The battle was forgotten. They were the only two people left in the world.

“If you mean to become a knight by slaying me, you will fail. No man in the seven kingdoms will even dream of facing me.”

“Indeed, n-no man. But this woman would.”

“You’re a proper wench, aren’t you?”

Thick pale eyebrows came close to meeting on her freckled forehead.

“Glory is not for the likes of you. Especially when it involves a man such as me.”

“Then-then fight me so. . .so we can see.”

“As you wish,” he drawled. _“Wench.”_

She grimaced. Her grip on the sword had turned her knuckles white.

Again he lunged. The moment he shot forward he realized he’d committed the same mistake twice already. Anger burned in his veins and he thrust and pushed and shoved with all he had. She thrust and pushed and shoved back, meeting each of his strikes, his blows. Their swords shook from the force of their clashes. Gold and silver sparks trailed after every scrape of steel upon steel. He looked at her over their crossed swords, blinking through the sweat pooling in his eyes. Flashes of blue and crimson cheeks filled his sight.

Then the wench turned, tried to do a full spin but he was quick to pin her against a tree, pressing the blade at the base of her throat. She blinked at him through damp strands of pale hair, flushed and panting.

He pressed on her body. She smelled of sweat and mud. Her heat seared through the armor. “I told you.”

Her scowl could curdle milk. As he got ready to slash at the freckled alabaster skin, she suddenly reeled back and _smacked_ him with her forehead. White stars exploded behind his eyes. As he staggered and gripped his sword, he heard her boots thudding on the ground. _She was going to run._

He opened his eyes, his mouth falling open when he saw her diving for the kill. He deflected her blow just in time. _Seven bloody hells._ The ground tilted under his feet. The sky shifted. The trees kept looming over him. When he managed to steady himself and focus, the first thing he saw were the wench’s eyes.

There was no fire in them but he saw a definite spark. He could almost forget how ugly she was. Almost.

This time they lunged at each other. The song of their swords reached Seven Heavens, and the sparks from the clash he swore could be seen for leagues. He slammed a booted foot on her stomach. It was like kicking through stone. She responded with a gauntleted fist to his face.

He slashed at her. She turned but hadn’t moved fast enough. The tip of his sword cut through her thigh. Her growl was rough and pained. He smirked as the cut bloomed like a red rose.

She stole his victory on the next breath.

Deft thrusts, rapid swings, a hard kick behind the knee and his sword was flying. As Jaime’s body slid across the ground, he saw the wench catch his sword and spin. Just before a tree halted him, he saw her point the sword at Addam’s throat. The sky splintered in white cracks before his eyes. As he rolled over groaning from the pain, Addam was once again falling. And from the looks of it, either unconscious or dead.

Jaime was still clutching his head, fighting the lure of sleep when the wench’s boots crossed his line of sight. He squinted at her. Her messy braid looked paler in the sun and her freckles clearer. Her coarse features too. Hells. Her shoulders blocked the sun for a bit. The wench was built like a mountain.

“Had enough, kingslayer?” He couldn’t help getting some satisfaction from how breathless she sounded. The brighter flush of her cheeks. The blood bloom on her thigh was dry now. He managed a bleary smile.

“Sounds like you do. _Wench_.”

It was sheer will and nothing else that brought him on his knees. And then, after what felt like too long a time, upright and on his feet. The wench was only a couple of steps away, face twisted in a mix of pity and what looked to be mockery.

“Been making it easy for you,” he muttered.

“Are you. . .are you indeed.” She sighed then dropped the swords.

And then Jaime shot forward. The wench only turned to the side, tripped him, and it was enough to send him flying and landing on his jaw on the ground. Groaning from another round of pain, he turned on his back. It felt like his head was going to split open. If it wasn’t already. Blood filled his mouth.

“Y-you’ve had enough, kingslayer.” But he shook his head at her words, trying to get up still.

Suddenly she was on him. Straddling his waist. The battlefield retreated once again. There was nothing but her ugly face and those fucking eyes. Her heavy thighs.

“You-you’ve been beaten,” she continued. He shook his head. Groaned. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. It was the last thing he remembered doing. When he came to, he was in chains and in a muddy pen with Addam. That had only been the beginning of his nightmare.

He had lived through one and never thought would live another. He was thinking about the sick children in the motherhouse, of the foreigners suspected of spreading the mysterious disease among the smallfolk, when someone knocked twice then entered the cabin.

It was Peck and Garrett. Peck was the first to enter, placing a porcelain basin on a table then leaving to fetch a pitcher. Garrett came in with a tray of food.

Once water was poured in the basin and table on which Jaime had his meals filled with plates and bowls of food, goblet of wine, the boys were sent away. Jaime washed his face quickly and used the towels next to the basin to wipe his nape and chest. He ate his food and then got dressed.

He left the cabin and climbed up on the deck just as a big wave came and drenched him. He glanced at his clothes. Old when he set foot in this ship and now just battered all over: loosened sleeves, seams falling apart, fissures of leather. Even the tip of his boot was beginning to yawn.

“Milord,” Warek greeted him. The captain’s weather-beaten face was placid as he sipped from a cup. His years from the sea had etched deep lines on his face, especially around the eyes.

“Captain,” Jaime acknowledged. Still keeping his hand up, he squinted at the sky. It was still gray but the sun was a considerably brighter than in King’s Landing. Winter he could still taste in the air, now coupled with salt. But there was no sensation of icicles stabbing his lungs when breathing.

The ship bounced over the waves. The wind whipped at his hair. Despite there being a bit more of the sun, the air was colder. Every time the wind blew he felt a layer stripped off his skin. His thicker beard gave him just enough protection.

Stacking his palms on the edge, Jaime glimpsed the water. It was blue. Dark still, but far from ominous storm or menacing steel. “Any more storms for us?”

Warek chuckled. “Two years ago, milord, I would have given you an answer. At least, I would be quite sure. But all the gray and too little sun in the sky make it difficult even for someone like to me be halfway certain.” He looked at the sky. “The sun hardly bothers to rise and when it does, won’t even last for half a day. We’re in the hands of the gods.”

“Aren’t we always,” Jaime murmured, his eyes still on the new blueness below the ship. “Cyvasse pieces to advance and toss when we’ve fulfilled our need. Whatever that may be.” Though he had little knowledge of the sea, the ceaseless bouncing and rocking motions told this wasn’t usual. Warek held on to nothing and his stance remained firm. Jaime had to hold on.

“We should be in Tarth in three days.” Warek nodded at the crew working behind him, and to some of Jaime’s guards on duty. Their heavy armor gave them firmer footing but also tossed them in the ocean first in a storm. Jaime thought they still looked quite green. The captain noticed this as well.

“Good news for your men. They’ll be glad to be on land.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. I wouldn’t mind being on land myself.”

“And just when your sea legs came in.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t lose them for the return journey.” Land Jaime looked forward to, even when it meant sand and rock rather than paved pathways. Sailing to Tarth, he was told, should take only a week at most, in decent weather. A storm would add a day but winter had screwed with a lot people thought they knew.

“Perhaps by then I’ll have some enjoyment traveling by sea when we begin our return. It’s still horses for me, I’m afraid.”

“The sea is the ultimate test of strength. Oh, you have your battles on land, milord. They do test the strength of man but until you’ve fought in the sea and somehow made it alive. . .out here, nothing is in your hands. Not for long. A wave can knock a sword from your hold. Smash you against a pillar. Toss you into the sea.”

Jaime nodded, thinking of the men lost in this journey. Hoping no more would be lost on their return.

“Armies have nothing on the merciless sea,” Warek went on. “She is gentler than the Mother when she wishes to but when she’s in a mood, even the Stranger bows.”

“So what can you say about this journey having the misfortune of three storms in seventeen days?”

Warek grinned, revealing tooth cased in gold. “It’s the sea introducing herself to you. Nothing more. We’re in Shipbreaker Bay, milord. A graveyard of a thousand ships.”

“Let’s not add this ship to that number then.”

“She’s just showing she can easily be an ally and if she wants, your nightmare come true.” Warek laughed. “For no other reason besides it being her nature. Below us is a world untouched by light. When the sea decides to take your life, she’ll put you through horrors first.” The lines around the captain’s eyes deepened. His gray eyes, closer to the color of ash in the faint light of the sun, took the color of sand. “I’ve seen it. Many times.” He glanced at Jaime. “The horror is the same be it child, woman, a man. Water gives life. And just as easily takes it.”

Men losing their lives at sea Jaime could understand. It was a risk they chose to take. For a person to lose her life so horrendously. . .no matter how many times he tried to shut it out, images still battered him: the fading light in Ilda’s red-rimmed eyes just before The Mountain’s sword found her throat, her head rolling down the velvet steps of the Iron Throne, the flush on Cersei’s cheeks during the mayhem, her half-closed eyes telling him all too well she was close to pleasure. 

No different from his sister, then, the sea.

It should hurt.

Cersei’s unraveling was a betrayal of the world, a love he thought he knew. For all his life his code was the sword and his sister. Being away from her was a darkness only banished once they were together again.

The more leagues grew between them by the day, the easier he breathed. The distance hardly blurred the horrors he’d witnessed but he was spared from new ones. Until his return. The thought felt like a journey pressed on him.

If the gods had some good left Taena Merryweather and her family would be untouched in The Reach. House Tarly now held the region but Randyll had never forgiven Cersei for giving his daughter to a Frey. That lingering antagonism might just keep the Merryweathers alive.

The rest of the realm under Cersei Jaime was far from sure.

“Still,” he couldn’t help telling Warek, “for all you know of the sea, you are hardly on land.”

Warek sighed loudly but his expression was peaceful and amused. “I’m under her spell, milord. The things you do for love, after all. Anyway, back to see the lads are keeping us on course.” He patted Jaime on the shoulder, who was stunned into silence by his words. The other man walked away.

For the rest of the journey, Jaime kept busy. He had his squires, Peck and Garrett Paege spar with the Lannister guards Cersei insisted on sending with him. He participated as well, disarming all of them too easily. He yelled at them for their poor footwork, the limp way they held swords.

Cersei was mistaken if she thought to win against Daenerys by numbers alone. The latter’s sellswords and bloodthirsty Dothraki would slice up her forces into ribbons before their boots made the faintest mark on the battlefield. _And then her dragons._

 _Sweet Cersei_ sailed into the waters of Tarth on the third day. Here the sea was bluer but still tainted with the gray and desolation of winter _. No sapphires._ Jaime stood on deck, breathing winter air flavored with salt. From afar, he glimpsed gray mounds on the landscape. Day was only different from night due to the white slivers of the sun. Night would fall soon.

Jaime peered through the eyeglass Warek had lent him. “Those mounds. Do I see windows?”

“Stone houses, milord. You’ve experienced yourself why the region is called such. But it’s Tarth that gets the brunt of the storms. Shacks would have you rebuilding your house until the end of days so people use stones.”

The ship dropped anchor and crew, guards and squires were quick to get to work. While Peck oversaw the unloading of trunks with two guards, Jaime took Garrett and the other two to buy horses. The air smelled of fish and ice, the wind blowing at his golden hair. Jaime thought it loosened more of the tired seams of his coat.

At the port were half a dozen ships. The gangplank groaned from the relentless rush of footsteps and the few animals coming from ships. Trunks holding precious cargo were carted off. Traders argued and haggled over the price.

Busy as the port was, Jaime spied that the windows of some taverns were boarded shut. A lot of stalls where he imagined goods were sold were empty too. Westerosi and Essosi folk mingled, a lot of them with baskets hardly filled with food and other goods.

“It will be night soon,” he informed Garrett, turning to the boy. “Take the horses to the others while I ride ahead for Evenfall Hall.” Noting the curious stares the locals were sending as they walked past, he cleared his throat and put a hand over the hilt of the sword, hiding the lion’s mane and ruby eyes. Curiosity could turn to aggression quite quickly once people realized who they were. Lowering his tone, he beckoned Garrett closer and spoke. “The urgency of our mission has made it impossible to send word to the Lady Brienne of our arrival. Best I go first instead with a small host.” He pointed. “See there, that highest point? That white castle? That’s Evenfall Hall. Ride for it as soon as you can.”

He chose the swiftest and most spirited mare, with soft eyes that reminded him of pools of honey. Her sweet face was belied by her thunderous gallops. She pounded on rough paths without the urgings of a whip, taking him for a ride through what few trees that remained in the gray landscape, dark and devoid of leaves, their thin branches looking like gnarly fingers clawing for air.

Tarth had been spared from snow but the frost on the ground stripped the land of fertility. He rode past stone houses big and small, farms where animals more bone than flesh grazed and poked for food. Over the horse’s grunts and his own breathing, he heard the faint squeals of a pig being slaughtered.

For every advance the mare made in their travel, the sky darkened. But Jaime’s eyes hardly left the marble castle that was Evenfall Hall, built on the highest point of Tarth and standing watch over the rest of the island like a faithful sentinel. As darkness fell, it seemed to glow whiter. Brighter.

The mare led him out of the forest and towards the curving, steep climb on the mountain where Evenfall Hall stood. The world was reduced to the waters before him, raging blue and gray waves that pulled rocks from their niches. Jaime tightened his hold on the reins. It wouldn’t help to see how high he was now. And getting higher.

Guards were lighting up torches flanking the gates of the castle when Jaime arrived. He charged past them, knowing the speed of the horse would make him an impossible target for arrows or sword. Approaching the courtyard, he tugged at the reins sharply. The horse whined and snorted in protest.

The courtyard bustled with activity. Horses led to the stables, dented breastplates smoothed and repaired. At the center of it all was a tall man inspecting a saddle, speaking to a young boy standing next to him. He looked up at Jaime. The man’s gray hair was tousled, swept away from his face by the strong wind. His blue stare was sharp.

It was for his eyes that Jaime almost mistook him for Selwyn Tarth. But the departed Evenstar had been much taller, and his hair white as a cloud in summer. Though aged during the last wars, Jaime remembered his shoulders could rival the breadth of mountain ranges and his arms muscled like rocks. He was feared in the battlefield for the swing of his sword, swift and always precise.

Selwyn Tarth never took prisoners. Only heads.

The man regarding Jaime, he remembered, was just as formidable in the battlefield. One of the few archers who could shoot quickly and surely from a horse at full gallop. The same man who had taught Brienne not only the sword but transformed her massive size as a weapon in itself.

“Jaime Lannister,” the man spoke, his soft voice nevertheless bringing everything to a standstill.

“Ser Goodwin,” he acknowledged with a quick incline of his head.

He climbed off the horse to properly greet the esteemed knight but it was the latter that ended up bowing to him, as everyone else did in the courtyard. He straightened up. He was slightly taller than Jaime.

“The maester takes charge of all the Lady Brienne’s correspondences. I would think he or the lady herself had neglected to inform us of your arrival but visitations from the crown are not the sort to slip from mind easily.”

“The fault is mine, good ser. The urgency of the mission impressed on me by my. . .by the queen was urgent and required my immediate departure for Tarth.”

Goodwin looked behind him and cocked an eyebrow.

“The rest of my host should arrive shortly. I thought it better to ride here first than to surprise you with a host, small as it is. I must speak,” Jaime paused a moment to breathe, “to Lady Brienne.”

“If you can wait, you shall be brought to your rooms, my lord.” Goodwin nodded at his worn clothes. “There you can rest and get ready. If not, you will have to ride for her whereabouts. My lady will not be arriving until it’s quite well into the evening, I’m afraid.”

“Then I shall ride. Where is she?”

“You’ll find her at Maiden’s Cove. I’ll give you directions, don’t worry. She requires a swim after a long day.”

“A swim?” Jaime didn’t hide the disapproval in his voice. Having seen the power of the sea, he demanded, “Alone? At least tell me a guard keeps watch.”

“What my lady does with her time on her time, however she desires, is her choice. Besides, she’s vowed to always return.” Goodwin smiled. “She will not break an oath, unlike some people.”

“Some oaths need to be broken, like it or not,” Jaime snapped. “She’s not just the lady of Tarth, ser, but Wardeness of the East. It’s not the wisest choice willfully forsaking vigilance over life, especially hers.”

Unperturbed, Goodwin replied, “Your concerns are noted, my lord.”

It didn’t take long for Jaime to be back on the horse again, this time pounding down the steep inclines of mountain paths as if he were the storm himself. Darkness was spreading through the island, with the first star of the night already glinting in the horizon.

By the time he’d reached the bottom of the mountain and charging for the cove, Tarth was wrapped in a mist of gray and white, as if ghosts had taken the island. He slowed the horse into a trot.

He spied the rocky formation of the small cave leading into the cove. The rocks were smooth and white from centuries of constant battering from the sea. A powerful-looking horse was tied to a tree. On it was a saddle stitched with the sigil of House Tarth: quartered yellow suns on rose, white crescents on blue. The horse glanced at Jaime as he swung down and steered the mare toward the tree.

The cave was small, and he had to crouch low while navigating it, guided more by the sound of the sea. Never had he heard it so loud—it seemed a thousand roars all at once.

When he emerged from the other side, he spied the tall pillar of fire. As he approached, he glimpsed discarded boots and hose, breeches and shirt. A deep blue leather coat that had seen better days was carefully folded on a rock. A breastplate was right next to it.

The breastplate was blue, also with the quartered sigil of suns and crescents. The many cracks on it told of many dents fixed.

Brienne was nowhere to be found. Goodwin told she would swim after sparring. Jaime turned to the water. The current looked strong even from the shore. The waves rolling and crashing on his boots were thick white foams.

A moment before darkness swooped over Tarth, he saw her.

She broke through the surface like a colossus of marble. Strong. Huge. Formidable. He held his own breath watching her mouth open to gulp in air, arms curving like the wings of a falcon about to take flight. Rather her hands smoothed hair from her face, water from clinging to her eyes. The motion caused her pointy little breasts to lift.

He watched her take a few more breaths, all while heading for the shore. He never took his eyes off her and so felt the moment she saw him. She suddenly stilled, mouth half-open. Water swept back and forth around her thighs, her legs.

Gone was the roar of the waves that had silenced the loudest screams in his head. Now all Jaime heard was his heart.

And then Brienne moved.

In the night and stars, her hair was moonwashed, and the droplets of the sea adorning her bare skin glittered like diamonds and pearls. As she approached, his eyes settled on the bush between her thick thighs. A wilder jungle than from what memory told, now wet and dripping. When only a few steps remained between them, she suddenly paused. Big, incredulous sapphire eyes stared at him.

She was everything and more than his mind could fathom or conjure up.

“You look well.”

He had to drag his gaze from her cunt to speak. A proper look of her face told the years had been far from kind. She looked ten years older than she actually was. Nevertheless, there was no lie in what he’d said.

She blinked and gave a quick, curt nod, putting one foot forward before suddenly stopping again. The sudden rush of red from her chest to cheeks did not come from the warmth of the fire. Yet she did not palm her breasts, now round soft mounds that jiggled from the gentlest of movements. Nor did she drop a hand between her thighs.

“Is it—” her voice was strangely feeble until she licked her lips and swallowed. “Is it really you?”

Pleased that her soft voice still had that robust quality, he nodded. “It is.”

She bowed her head, eyes on the sand.

“I’m here. I’m real.”

He watched her gather herself, first by closing her eyes briefly then a quick, deep breath before looking at him again. This time he saw the faint scrawl of lines under her eyes. Some of the light was gone from her stare. Her body was no longer packed with muscle. Now it was only a shadow of the strength she once had. A fist closed around his heart seeing her like this.

He sat close to the fire and she moved again, moving past him to get her clothes. The wind blew then, sending a whiff of sweat and sea from her thighs, and the secret musk that only lovers know. Before she could take another step, his hand came up to her stomach, stopping her.

She grasped his hand. Wove her fingers between his. Her touch was cool and wet, her palm calloused and rough. But gentle. So very gentle.

“Jaime.”

It was enough. Their hold firmed and then he was pulling her down to her knees, pushing her slightly until she was on her back on the sand. Sapphire and emerald eyes mirrored the flames of the fire before he turned to lower his head between her thighs.

Her grunt was a tight, startled sound as his tongue nudged at the folds before swooping in to taste the slick flesh between them. Scents of salt and woman greeted him, as heady a punch as it was the first time when she’d ridden his face. Flattening his palms on her thighs to keep them far apart, he drank the sweetest, richest wine he had ever known.

He wished to swim in the depths of her cunt but could only taste. Drink. Feast. Swallow. His nose nuzzled her wet bush. Over the wild curls he watched her watching him, curving and flattening his tongue depending on the sharpness of her gasps, the shrillness of her cries and the firming clutch of her fist on his hair. Her other hand clawed and pushed at the sand, fingers drawing haphazard trails of her want. When he freed her thighs to thumb her folds open and wrapped his lips around the plump pearl in between, her hips rocked swiftly against his cheeks.

He would laugh at how her thighs tried to squeeze his head but she tasted too good and so good.

Her screamed ripped through the night. He swore it also sent the stars reeling back. He slurped the honey pouring out of her, losing himself in the feel and taste and all of her. His own hips pushed against the sand to relieve the growing ache of his arousal. Release was imminent. His entire body could feel it. Demanded it.

But he didn’t endure seventeen days and three storms to lose his discipline on the sand. With great reluctance, he lifted his head off her and rose on his knees, shaky fingers attacking the laces of his breeches.

She lay flat and limp on the sand, sand-crusted hands by her ears. The cold had pinched her nipples into tight, fat peaks but on her cheeks was the clear splotch of pink. As his other hand worked on the rest of the laces, the other tenderly caressed the broad span of her stomach, traced the somewhat prominent ribs as if they were strings on a lute before cupping one small breast. Cold air stirred the curls around his cock as the breeches fell, but he barely noticed. How could he when his lips were on her, teeth playfully nipping at the soft skin of her stomach?

Her hands on his hair, his nape, his shoulders, pulled a groan from him. He arched and leaned into her touches, eyes half-closed. It had been so long, being touched like this. He moved up her body, pleased at how she continued caressing him, pulling at his coat, the hairs of her legs tickling the backs of his thighs. He mouthed one nipple and tasted the sea and woman.

She moaned, a deep, rough song that hardened his cock some more. He took another nipple between his teeth, tucking a hand under her knee to draw it high around his waist. She arched sharply, nearly throwing him off her.

As he laved kisses around her thick neck, he felt her hands moving again, slipping between their surging bodies. He gasped against her shoulder when her fingers wrapped around his cock, pulled it toward her cunt. His hands sank in the sand as he pushed himself up, looking at the silvery sheen of her sapphire eyes, big teeth peeking from her parted lips.

“P-Please.” It was half a grunt, half a whisper. He sighed as his cock slid the first few inches into her drenched entrance. _She’s warm._ She looked almost beautiful in the silver-blue light of the stars and the moon. “Please.”

She need not ask. He pushed inside.

She let out a breath, a puff of white air into the night. He raked his teeth around her jaw, feeling himself shake more from the effort of making the pleasure last than the cold. _To be inside her again._ Memory and dreams did not do her justice. She was hotter than fire. Wetter than the sea, if that was even possible. And her eyes—he leaned in, filling his vision with their clear, round pools—the bluest and clearest of all blues.

As he fell in her eyes, so did his mouth fall on hers. While their bodies surged as if in war, their kiss was soft, shy, tentative and tasting. It hit him that they had never kissed at any point during that first and only night in Harrenhal. He had eaten out her cunt but not laid kisses on her hard, warrior’s body, nor taken pleasure in the softness of her pillowy mouth. And by the gods, she had the softest, most giving mouth.

Neither noticed the sand coating their bodies as their hands ventured haphazardly on each other. Goosebumps covered his nape, her arms, his thighs, and her legs but where they touched would erase them, replaced by heat. Her body undulated powerfully under his but her embrace was the gentlest he’d been in. It was like being held by life itself.

His cock managed to last a total of four thrusts before he gasped against her mouth, hand clutching at her jaw. For a moment the world was as golden as the sun again. An eternal summer.

Then the stars returned. Night swooshed back in, like waves crashing into the shore. He collapsed in her arms, forgetting the whisper of winter stirring the sands, the hairs on their bodies. There was only Brienne and her arms, and the searing clutch of her cunt.

“You’re here.” She touched his cheek.

He kissed her fingertips. “I am.”

He held her, breathing only her scent, feeling only her. They could very well be the only two people left in the world.

They lay like this until a great chill seized their bodies. Brienne sat up, rubbing her palms together. Jaime did the same. He was dressed but his clothes were wet from her body. They were covered in sand too.

“Quickly.” Brienne, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, pointed at his coat. “Remove that. Everything.”

“There’s sand up my ass,” he complained, trying to dust off but smearing more with his wet hands. He tried hopping in place as she was, removing his coat and ripping part of the sleeve from the shoulder in the process. Brienne tossed it to the rocks, near her own clothes.

His tunic was off next but the breeches, despite being open and dragged partially to his thighs, adhered to his wet skin. He had to lay down to push them while Brienne yanked at his boots. Once free from clothes, she grabbed his hand and took him to the water. He stumbled and tripped after her.

 _“Bloody seven hells!”_ He shouted as sheets upon sheets of icicles stabbed his feet. “Are you mad? I’m not swimming. ”

“No. Not swimming.” She pulled him hard until water waded around their ankles then legs. He yelped and jumped, trying to make his way back to the safety of sticky sand and his wet clothes but she blocked and turned him back to the water.

“Trust me. You don’t want sand up your ass.”

“My balls will freeze and drop, you do realize that?” He snarled as she dropped to her knees and started splashing water to his legs.

She sighed loudly. “This would be easier if we just go a bit further.”

“No.”

“Jaime.”

“ _How_ can you swim in water this cold?”

“The swim makes you warm. Fine,” she grunted, scooping water in her cupped palms. A growl that made him think the Drowned God was coming for them drew his eyes to the water. Waves the size of _castles_ rushed to them. He turned to run but a wall of crashed on him, the force pushing him face first into the shore. As he yelled, sputtered and was wracked with shivers, a smaller wave fell on him.

“We just need to get rid of the sand,” she said, the waves receding. Jaime continued to lay on the shore, shivering and glaring at her as she poured more water on him to clear away the gritty sand. He thought he saw her smile.

As much as he would love to shove her face in the water for this torture, he thought her smile quite sweet.

“Stand up. There’s more on your chest.” She tucked hands under his arms to pull him upright. Odd that once most of him was out of the water, the shivers returned. She splashed and poured more on him, and he swore she made cooing, clucking sounds as if comforting a child.

Then she put her arms around him. He fell on her chest, tipping his chin up to look at her. But she kissed him. Gave him a kiss that banished all sensation and thought—cold, sand, Cersei, Ilda, blood, broken oaths.

He expected to be swooped up in a fiery storm of kisses and touches. Instead her kisses were flutters on his mouth like butterfly’s wings, quick yet soft, very soft. Her sighs were warm gusts on his tongue, rapid successions of breath and coupled with sweet half-moan and murmurs. He let her take hold of his face to deepen the kiss.

As her tongue darted too quickly in and out of him, his hand traveled to her neck, her cheek. She was hot as fever despite the tremors wracking her body. Lower he moved his hand, pleased with the roughness of her bush despite the saltwater. It brought her to stillness, then a slow, sensuous melting that brought her down the wet sand and water again.

He followed her.

They gasped from the cold water, halting the kiss for a few breaths before grabbing each other to resume their mutual assault with tongues. His arms circled the back of her shoulders and around the hips, before turning to set her on top of his thighs. As she whimpered and question flashed in her half-closed eyes, he grabbed her by the hips, groaning at the vision of the silvery sea water dripping from her hairy slit before setting her roughly around his cock.

“Jaime—“he didn’t let her finish, grabbing her by the chin to take her mouth again. She squirmed; his seed still slicked her entrance, she was still soft from fucking but wasn’t very ready for the next thrust. He cupped her head in both hands, kissing and kissing her until she yielded with a moan, the fresh slickness in her cunt pulling him deeper inside.

Water crashed and spilled around them, the rhythm of the tide as rapid as their thrusts. He palmed one of her breasts through the surge, licking the seam of her lips. She tasted of salt, her breath dry. She felt like wet silk over steel. There was little grace to their fucking—she went fast when he wished to hold on to a sensation, slowed when he wanted it faster.

But he wanted her. He was cold and covered in goosebumps and sand but needed, so, so needed her. She rode him like some warrior of the night, bathed in the light of the moon and glittering with droplets of the sea around her neck, her breasts, her arms. Her cries were the sounds of battle and triumph.

Feeling the imminent rush of his release, he pulled one of her nipples between his teeth and drew harshly. She bucked against him and shrieked, bathing his cock with the honeyed gush of her pleasure.

She fell on him this time, knocking him back to the sand with a force akin to a crashing wall. As her body continued to quiver, he brushed his lips on her shoulder, stroked the long line of her back, cupped the surprising plushness of her bottom.

And then he just hugged her. She was familiar yet new. She had never felt like a stranger in his arms.

“Do you—do you like clams?” She raised her head a little to look at him. She did look almost lovely in moonlight and stars, her eyes a liquid, clear blue. Water dripped from her forehead then plopped on the tip of his nose, slid down his lips. He caught it with the tip of his tongue.

Still feeling a little drunk from the high of his release, he murmured, “Clams?”

She nodded. “With the shells?”

He chuckled. “Wench, I do know what they are.”

“Still?” Her pale eyebrows almost met as she frowned. “Wench, really? After all this time?”

He answered with a lingering kiss on the mouth. She moaned and kissed him back.

They ended the kiss at the same time. She climbed off him, offered a hand. Standing side by side, they splashed water onto the clumps and strands of sand on their bodies. It was amusing to see the bright pink spots on her cheeks. She looked soft, and almost like the young warrior who had trounced him in the battlefield.

It felt like another lifetime ago. And it was actually an easier time, bloody as it had been.

They left the water, standing close to each other for warmth. They slipped on boots first to prevent getting sand on their feet and legs while getting dressed. Jaime stood close by the fire while shaking out the sand from his breeches. Brienne picked up her own breeches and shirt from a rock where they were neatly folded.

Cold as he was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. Her breasts jiggled gently as she shook and straightened the shirt before pulling it on. Twisting and turning slightly and the softness of her stomach became evident. Where there used to be defined muscles, now it was only a smooth surface, with small rolls. Her head popped through the hole of the shirt and she went to take off the boots, propping one foot at a time on a rock. Her thighs still looked strong, as did her long legs.

Watching the long length of her breeches pulled up her leg caused his cock to twitch yet again. Clearing his throat, he turned away to get dressed.

As he laced up his coat, she walked past him, a little pot in her hand and wineskin in the other. She crouched to put the pot on the fire. Removing the lid, she tipped the wineskin into the pot.

“Clams are best eaten fresh and raw,” she said, sounding oddly breathless as she put the lid back on. Jaime sat beside her, for a moment distracted by the lock of wet hair falling over her forehead. As he flicked it away with a finger, she breathed loudly and continued, “but-but clams in wine makes a nice winter fare. The richness of the wine emphasizes the sweetness of the. . .of the. . .”

He smiled at the twin pink flares on her cheeks. “Of the what?”

“Clams,” she whispered, turning to him. She held his hand to her face.

“You can fuck me again if you’re still not sure I’m real,” he offered, sounding a little breathless himself.

There was that shy, half-smile again. The muscle of her cheek flexed against his palm. “You did not come all the way here to fuck me.”

“Did I not? I swear that’s the reason I braved three storms and losing all my meals to the ship’s floor or the sea.” He raised his other arm to show the looseness of the sleeve. “See? I’ve been half-starved.”

“It’s good we have more than enough clams between us then.”

Just like that, they were kissing again. He couldn’t remember if he’d kissed or been kissed this much in such a short span of time. He pulled until she straddled his lap, cool, large palms holding his face. He slid a hand between them, pushing at the flaps of her coat, the tail of her tunic to pull at the laces of her breeches. Once there was enough room, he cupped her cunt.

“Jaime.” His name was air from her lips falling slack as he rubbed her. She was still wet from the sea, and cool and fresh. When he sank a finger in her, she was warm and slick, and felt as rich as sin. She clung to his shoulders as he covered her throat with little kisses and nibbles.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” she panted loudly in his ear before catching the tip between her teeth. He gasped, the thrusts of his finger halting as pleasure seized him from her bite. “It was only that one night. One night from nine years ago.”

He concurred with a nonsense murmur against her shoulder. Gods fucking seven but he was hard again. So hard he could only see flashes of light, mostly blue.

Suddenly, Brienne got to her feet. He stared at her, stunned and a little hurt until she yanked at her boots and pulled her breeches down. Grinning, he pulled at his laces too, widening the gap just enough to pull his cock out. She went back to him, hair on her face, eyes shining. He yanked her sharply down his lap.

 _“Oh, Jaime.”_ Her moan could tempt the most pious of septons. He held his cock while she spread her cunt to take him. Her heat wrapped around him. Gripping him by the shoulders, she murmured, “One night. It shouldn’t feel like it was only yesterday.”

He licked her cheek. “Shall I have this dance, sweetling?”

He grasped the sides of her tunic and yanked, splitting it right in the middle and freeing her breasts. Her shriek softened to a grunt when he pulled one of her nipples into his mouth. _“Oh.”_

She bounced up and down around his cock quickly, roughly, as guided by his hands. The entire time his mouth remained wrapped around her nipple, feeling the soft bud firm into a fat, ripe berry. It didn’t take long for her to shatter—just as well because he couldn’t stop himself. He suckled on the nipple noisily as her cunt squeezed and dragged the last drops of his seed from his cock. When he finally freed her nipple, soft fingers fluttered around his cheeks, gently urging him to look up. He sighed as she rested her forehead on his.

“You ride very well, wench,” he panted, grinning.

“Quite the wild buck I was on,” she responded, kissing him.

When they recovered the use of their legs, Jaime insisted on checking the clams. He took his cloak, shook the sand from it and swept it around her shoulders. She was blushing as she grasped it close—her coat seemed to have lost a few buckles so she couldn’t really hide her torn tunic nor her breasts.

He stepped back to look at her. Bathed in fire, her hair blowing in the wind, her face looking soft and tender that she was almost beautiful. He swept aside a flap of the coat to stare at her cunt. His seed was liquid pearls dripping down her thighs. She was breathtaking.

“Jaime?”

“Yes?”

“I’m—I’m cold. I need my breeches?”

“Ah.” The flap covered her again and he fetched her breeches. He slapped it on some rocks to remove the sand again before handing them to her.

As Brienne dressed, Jaime checked on the clams. A fragrant aroma rose when he removed the lid. He took the pot away from the fire and set it on the sand to cool.

He turned and saw Brienne had put on her boots and was now trying to fix what she could of her torn tunic. She suddenly looked so young to him. Young, vulnerable. Sweet. So he didn’t know why he had to fuck all over the moment with what he said next:

“The queen sent me.”

Her fingers faltered for a few seconds and then she resumed trying to cover her breasts again.

“You have my word that she’s seen the wisdom of your concern in the letter you sent to me. She didn’t tell me the exact contents of her scroll, nor did I even try looking at it. All we can hope for,” he continued, turning to the fire before looking out into the sea, “is it’s not too late.”

“I heard what’s been happening in King’s Landing. Are they all true?”

He shifted his gaze back to the flames. “Yes.”

“She can’t. . .she can’t be. . .” Her voice was tight. “She can’t be suspicious of everyone who’s either foreign or poor or both. She can’t think they’re all Daenerys’ spies.”

“I agree.”

“So why? Why isn’t she doing more to protect the people? How can she let this hatred go unabated?”

“Brienne—”

“She listens to you, doesn’t she? You’re. . .you’re her husband.” Her chin quivered as the last word fell. Taking his hand drew his eyes back to her. “Surely. . .surely you don’t condone this?”

“Of course I don’t. How can you even ask me that?” He snatched his hand away as if burned.

“I apologize. I should have known better than to accuse you.”

“No. You can’t. . .of course anyone would think that. I’ve tried.”

She sat next to him. He reached out to touch her, hesitating briefly before putting a hand on her thigh. “I’ve done all I could. I really have.”

Her silence was a knife.

“You can’t expect me to betray her.”

“Haven’t we already?” She bit her lip.

“Let’s not fight.” He couldn’t believe he was pleading with her.

“I don’t want to fight. I just. . .” Grunting, she suddenly flung some sand into the fire, causing it to reel back. “I don’t know right from wrong anymore. I haven’t for a long time. Not since the war.”

“I never regretted flinging the Stark boy from the tower,” he confessed. “I should but I still don’t. I took no pleasure in what happened but it was my sister. The children. Just as I don’t regret loving my sister as I had.”

Brienne frowned. “Had?”

“The woman I had loved my whole life was only a dream. That or I’m slowly coming awake.” Jaime wished for rocks to throw. “The world tells me it’s wrong. That I should have regrets. But for each choice I made deemed unforgivable has brought me to you.”

“But do you still love her? If what you say is true. . .so should you know the answer to that.” She reddened. “I make no demands, Jaime.”

“I want to still love her.” He said, looking at her and daring her to see him. All of him and through him. “I want you to know that. I want to still love her. I just can’t anymore. Not after everything that’s happened.”

He was counting on her to stand up and leave. Wanted her to leave so he could fight for her to stay. Instead she not only remained seated but also pushed the pot toward him.

“You should eat. You’ve had quite the journey.”

The clams in wine were as delicious as she’d promised. They spoke little throughout the meal. Yet as soon as the last shell was flung to the sand, they turned to each and were kissing again. They fucked with Brienne bent over the rocks, Jaime’s hand clutching one of her breasts.

She grunted climbing up her horse, muttering she felt tender. Their eyes met over the saddle and he grinned. He wasn’t sorry. Then he got on his horse. Following her lead, they rode for Evenfall Hall.

He never doubted her assurances that the horses will find their way in the dark, but he still wanted to kiss the ground upon seeing the lighted gates to Evenfall Hall. She rode ahead, drawing the reins to halt her stallion as servants appeared to assist her. As his mare trotted after her, he glimpsed Goodwin standing under the arched doorway. Next to him was the maester, dressed in a coat that was once a bright blue but now faded. The gray of his robes and his chains peeked from the opening.

Brienne swung a leg over and climbed down. Jaime had to remember he had to do the same thing. Together they walked to the two men, Brienne preceding him.

“Lady Brienne,” Goodwin greeted her with a bow. He nodded at Jaime. “My lord.”

“Ser Goodwin,” she acknowledged. “Maester Orlyn. This is Ser Jaime Lannister.”

“It would please you to know your men have been fed and are now resting in their rooms,” Goodwin informed Jaime. “Your guards insist that one of them should be stationed at your chambers, on the orders of the queen.”

Jaime cringed inwardly. Cersei never gave a thought on the insult incurred on insisting her guards on him in Evenfall Hall.

“Then her orders will be followed,” Brienne declared, pale eyebrow raised. Turning to Jaime, she said, “You will take the chamber of the Moonmaid.”

“He has, my lady.” Orlyn assured her.

“Good. Then Ser Jaime,” Brienne addressed him. “You need to rest. Urgent as your mission is, neither of us is any shape to engage in any way regarding the kingdoms. Wouldn’t you agree?”

She was blushing as she spoke. He had to struggle to not smile. “I see no reason to question you, Lady Brienne.”

“Good. It’s best you retire early this evening then. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

A Lannister guard was already standing at the door of the chamber of the Moonmaid when Jaime arrived. His squires had not only put his clothes in the armoire but also laid out his sleep shirt and trousers at the foot of the bed.

The chamber was modest compared to the Red Keep. Spacious and with every window looking out into the sea, the carpets and rugs were faded and quite threadbare. The tapestries as well. The four-poster bed’s design was from twenty years ago at least. The pillows and sheets were silk but trimmed with lace that had begun to yellow.

Cersei would be furious to even just see such a room. Jaime didn’t care. He sat on the bench at the foot of the bed, thinking of the shit and muck he’d slept on for close to a year as prisoner, the hard ground that became his bed following his escape. He was a Lannister but a knight, and thus had learned to prefer necessities over luxuries. And on a cold winter night, all that mattered was a fireplace that brought warmth that was close to summer.

He was about to undress when someone knocked. “My lord, it’s servants with the bath,” the guard called out.

A bath. He shrugged off his coat saw dust fall at his feet. “Let them in.”

Maids curtsied before him then dragged a large tub into the room. It took six pails of steaming water to fill it. Jaime waved away their offers to assist him and waited until the other servants finished setting up table and chair for when he was ready to eat.

Jaime left the rest of his clothes on the floor then climbed in the tub. The searing water swirled around him like a dream.

Soap was a small unscented cake that nevertheless did a fine job of scrubbing the dirt and more sand from his hair and skin. He rubbed soapy palms roughly on his face before sinking into the water to rinse it. He didn’t dither too long in the tub once done.

After drying off with a towel, he pulled on a robe. The clams had abated his hunger but taking Brienne twice had made him hungry again.

Food was stew consisting of salmon and herring, with finely chopped leeks. It was simple but flavorful, and came with hard, dark bread. The wine was on the sour side but he was satisfied. No swaying lamp or wooden floorboards creaking through the night as the ship rocked. He would sleep in peace tonight. The robe was tossed on the bench and he crawled into bed.

He must have fallen asleep quite quickly because he found himself suddenly roused and blinking at the dark space around. The fire had receded, thus enabling a chilly mist in the chamber. He groaned and dragged the blanket around his shoulders as he went to feed more wood into the fire.

He was stoking the fire, coaxing it to grow and chase the cold away when he heard the softest of taps. He frowned, trying to decipher where it came from. It was a series of repeating sounds, almost insistent. Gripping the poker, he got to his feet.

Unbelievably, he heard a voice, though heavily muffled. “Jaime?”

_I’m going mad._

“Jaime. Behind the armoire.”

_“Brienne?”_

“Yes.”

He squinted at the room, saw the armoire. Gritting his teeth, he pushed it aside with as little noise as possible. A draft of cool air hit his body. He pushed until the gap was wide enough to not only reveal a narrow hallway but also Brienne, bedraggled and yawning. She was wearing a blue robe that was the exact blue of her eyes.

“Wench, what—” He yawned hugely. She was blinking rapidly and blushing redder by the second. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? What—why—” He gestured helplessly behind her before tugging her by the hand. “Come here.”

She pushed the armoire back to its original spot with hardly any effort. He tossed the poker away and clutched the blanket rightly around his body.

“You’re really here, aren’t you?” He asked when she turned back to him. 

She nodded.

He glanced behind her. “A secret passage?”

She looked embarrassed. “My-my father kept mistresses but still believed in discretion.”

“I see.” He pulled her by the side of the bed, flinging the blanket back to the mattress before facing her. She gulped visibly at his nude body, her eyes glued to his cock. He smirked. “Wench, you’ve seen me like this before. Come here.”

Then he took the laces of her robe. She squawked and seized his hands. “What are you doing?”

“Tell me the truth. Did you sneak in here through a secret passageway to talk about the realm or some other boring topic?”

Her blush deepened and she shook her head.

“Good.” He slapped her hands away. This time she didn’t stop him.

The robe fell, revealing a gauzy, high-necked sleeping gown. He rolled his eyes up at her and she blushed anew. She undid the laces this time, pulling until the neckline was wide enough to slide down her shoulders. Little breasts with pointy pink nipples were revealed next.

“I—I just want to be with you.” She was _shaking._ Unsure. The gown dipped past her wide hips. “I-I should—should I have asked first? I mean, because you fucked me—”

The sentence ended with a sharp inhale when he palmed her cunt. The thick hairs rustled against his palm as he stepped closer. He stood on tiptoe to take her mouth. She groaned and kissed him back ardently.

 _She was learning._ As his tongue plundered her mouth, he dragged her hand to his cock. To his relief, she knew what to do.

Gods, she knew _very well_ what to do.

She was the first to fall on the bed. It pleased him to have her looking up at him this time, cow-eyed yet sweet, especially with her swollen lips. Smiling with a tenderness he never knew was possible with him, he caressed her burning cheek.

“You need not ask, Brienne. Not with me. No matter what, I’m all yours.”

Then he guided her to lie down, moving together until their long forms were fully stretched out on the bed. He gazed at her in the firelight, his heart racing taking in her soft eyes, the pinkness of her plump nipples, her soft belly. But it was the blond jungle between her thighs where he gazed the longest.

She spread her legs. “Wider,” he prompted. So she did. “You think you can keep them like that for the rest of the night, wench?”

She was blushing and looking at him with big eyes. “I-I want to.”

“Good.”

He lowered his head.

******

An early morning summons was not what Jaime expected at all, not from the night he had. Still he dressed quickly and followed the Tarth guard down the hallway then the massive, curving staircase and another hallway where generations of Brienne’s ancestors glowered at him from faded canvases. Wheat hair and sapphire eyes were Tarth traits, he discovered. He lowered his head and his stare fell right on the ruby eyes of the sword worn at the side of his hip.

The guard opened the door, revealing shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling crammed with scrolls and volumes. The library also served as the small council chambers, he discovered, once spying the long wooden table in polished dark wood on which Orlyn and Goodwin sat on opposite sides. A chair at the head had been pulled away. Glancing past it, he saw Brienne standing by the window, looking wan and sleepy in the gray morning. From the fireplace was the faint crackling of fire.

Brienne did not have Selwyn’s commanding presence but she grabbed Jaime’s attention and held it—rather, her swollen red lips did. He was grateful for the coat that hid the tenting in his breeches as his eyes lingered there, remembering the countless times in the night he’d eaten at her mouth or pushed his cock past plump lips to fuck her throat.

He wondered if she could still taste him. Her flavor lingered in the back of his mouth.

Soft as her eyes were, her expression was stern—hawk-like in scrutiny of him. Her braid was messy and one of the collars of her tunic raised rather than folded. Despite her somewhat mussed-up appearance, Jaime found himself on guard. When his eyes drifted to the parchment on the table, he discovered the reason for the tension in the library.

He had already expected that whatever Cersei written there did little to help. But he hadn’t counted on inciting ire of a magnitude that might take his head from his body. Perhaps his sister was right to insist on sending Lannister guards.

Except that he hadn’t thought to bring any of them with him this morning.

“I trust the queen has approved your request to arm and prepare the Stormlands for an imminent attack by Daenerys, yes?” He inquired.

“Indeed. She wants us to build ships, Ser Jaime.” Brienne’s tone was clipped.

“A good first step in forming a defense, if I may say so.”

“Being as you arrived as darkness was falling, you can be forgiven for not noticing the state of our forests. Your ride should have revealed what little we have of it is gone. Tarth is the only place in the Stormlands spared from snow but frost has killed crops and other vegetation. This winter has also driven us to take every tree as firewood lest we freeze. The few trees that remain, if any, have come to rot.”

Goodwin was the next to speak.

“The region continues to take a beating from winter, my lord. Amberley is buried in snow. All soldiers sent there to bring what little food the region could scrounge up for aid have not returned. Famine continues to take lives in Nightsong, Ashford and Wyl as we speak. Blackhaven,” he continued with a heavy sigh, “thought to include a civil conflict within its borders on top of winter because there are no Dondarrions left to rule. It’s no Iron Throne, the Dondarrion seat, but any chair from which you can give orders for many to follow will always be coveted. Lastly,” he added, “A hurricane has felled Estermont.”

“You look surprised, Ser Jaime,” Orlyn remarked, catching his frown. “We trust that the queen has apprised you of the situation in the Stormlands. The Lady Brienne had religiously sent her scrolls and I took charge of the ravens. There has been no acknowledgment of any sort in connection to them. Until my lady wrote directly to you, once it became clear Daenerys’ ships have made their presence known in our coast. Is there any reason why the queen appears to have no knowledge of goings-on in the region?”

“On the bright side,” Goodwin suddenly remarked, “I suppose we can breathe a sigh of relief that we’re finally allowed to bear arms. Seven blessings on us to be finally relieved of reparations so the treasury can be used for war.”

“I have no trouble believing the seven blessings on the treasury,” Orlyn added, his chuckle brittle like glass. “Since it’s all that we can see of it. If we put our heads together and ignore the growls in our stomach.”

Then the two men glanced at Brienne, who nodded. Pushing their chairs back to rise, they shot Jaime grave, disapproving looks. “If you will excuse us, my lord,” Goodwin said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. Jaime met the old knight’s hard gaze before the latter’s broad shoulder brushed him.

“Winter seems to have buried manners,” Jaime remarked to Brienne once they were alone.

“Do you expect us to be pleased?” Brienne put her hand on the parchment and slid it to him. It sailed across the long table and Jaime stopped it with his palm. “I know you have nothing to do with the conditions stated there but for the love of the Seven, Jaime. You’re the Master of Laws. She’s your sister.”

He saw her grimace before continuing in a softer voice, “You’re her husband.”

She bowed her head and turned away again. Jaime was torn between going to her or reading Cersei’s letter. He was far from happy with the choice he made.

_Lady Brienne of Tarth,  
  
The queen understands the urgency of your request. Your dedication in protecting realm and crown is commendable. Count on the queen’s appreciation in having you as an ally. _

_Begin building yours ships and arming the rest of the Stormlands. It is expected that every able-bodied man and woman would serve and fight in the name of the queen. Nothing less is expected. Your treasury is relieved of its obligation toward reparation, and your gold should be used towards the protection of the Seven Kingdoms._

_Your determination to serve means such is the level of commitment that I expect throughout the Stormlands. There is no other outcome I expect in the coming war but victory. Being Wardeness of the East, you will take charge of protecting and fighting for this side of Westeros. Any outcome in the upcoming battle outside of the queen’s desire shall see debts incurred to the crown, and the crown will accept no less than the lives of all sons of the Stormlands aged ten years and over._

_If such a lesson was never learned the first time, it is a lesson that shall be revisited until learned._

A chill colder than the winter air he breathed settled in his bones. He looked up and there was Brienne, arms crossed as she stared out of the window. He didn’t have to look closely to see her despair and anger. They hit him like relentless waves.

“The queen should just slaughter us all. At least we’re relieved of the burden of protecting a kingdom that would reward our failures by taking the only light of our lives,” she said, biting her lip. “Each time I believe I have done what is good, the people I’m supposed to protect await punishment.”

“I will not let her do this. You know that, don’t you?”

“I have no reason to doubt you, Jaime. But do you think you’re enough?” She turned to him then, revealing tears on her cheeks. “On one side is the dragon queen. She will not hesitate to burn us all. Your sister on the other. What makes you think she will forgive you?”

“I’m still her brother. Her—” he hated having to say it, especially to her, in front of her. “I’m her husband.”

“I let Humfrey do abominations to me in order to protect my son. I could have murdered that bastard in so many ways but it would mean destroying Lyonel. The queen’s peace terms demanded I give up my son to the hands of stranger fighting on the other side during the war. And now. . .now if I fail she gets his life.” She sniffed. “All my life all I’ve wanted is to do right by my father. No father deserves someone who looks like me as a daughter. No one. I cared not for glory or winning as long as our House continues. But your sister wishes to see the end of us, doesn’t she? All because we chose the wrong side. All the gold in the world will never be enough to earn her forgiveness.”

“No.” He said after a silence that stretched for a good while. The dark sun, just risen, had gone from the smoke of gray to storm. “She will never forgive the Stormlands.”

“Indeed.”

Jaime picked up the parchment. “Forget her threats, Brienne. There is still a way—”

“Weren’t you listening to Orlyn and Goodwin? There is nothing in Tarth or anywhere in the Stormlands that could fulfill any of her commands. There are no trees for ships. There are no blacksmiths to build weapons or even nails. If they hadn’t fled for places spared from winter they’re dead from starvation. She has to know that,” she spat, her lips curling. “Seven knows Daenerys does.”

She turned back to the window. “She watches. Her ships never come close enough but we’ve seen them. And if there’s truth to the whispers she’s sent spies to work on every aspect of our lives, then she’ll know where to strike first, where Westeros is weakest.”

She didn’t have to identify exactly where Westeros was weakest. They both knew.

“And I can’t even protect my own son. What armor distance gives him will be gone at your sister’s orders.”

“Addam will never harm the boy.” Jaime declared.

She shook her head. “He’s your bannerman. If he refuses she will execute his House, even the rats in the kitchens. She knows exactly how to pay her debts.”

“Tywin was without mercy but never cruel.”

“You’re mistaken thinking there’s a difference.”

She tried to walk past him then. He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “You’re not just going to retreat in some corner and give in to tears, are you?” He demanded.

“What else do you think I can do?”

“Fight back, gods damn it. Fuck ships, Brienne. You can still win this.”

“You seem to forget the position I’m in.”

“Then get the fuck out of it. Fight your way out of it, isn’t that what you were taught? What happened to the warrior that bested me in the battlefield? To the woman who endured her husband’s abuse?” She flinched and shook him away sharply. Jaime hated himself. “Forgive me. I heard rumors. I. . .I refused to believe they were true.”

“None were lies.”

She tried moving past him again. This time he caught her around the waist. It wasn’t easy getting her to turn to him but at least he was holding her. He could feel her falling apart: the gleam of fight and battle slowly fleeing her eyes, the upturned curve of her lips drooping, the strength in her body sapped with every thought of Cersei’s threat. His hand drifted up her neck, to her face, gently taking hold of her chin and urging her by touch to look at him.

“No harm will come to your son. Nor you. I may be all that stands between you and my sister’s army but I will, Brienne. _I will_.”

As soon as he spoke the words, he not only knew he would fight to see them unbroken—there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Brienne. He would take every arrow, burn, stab, for as long as she and her son lived. It would be a vastly different world, darker and crueler than it was now, for life to leave her eyes.

“Jaime,” she breathed before his mouth seized hers with a desperate, hard kiss.

He was hard but sinking in her sweet warmth was the last thing he wanted now. If a kiss could indeed put fears to rest, heal your brokenness, he hoped with everything that it be true for the first time.

So he wrapped hands around her face, her nape, pulling her further down to his mouth. His tongue thrust past her lips to take every drop of her despair, the fragile wet thread nevertheless keeping them together, and ever more closer as he deepened the kiss. She sighed and fell on him, sending them both on the chair that scraped loudly against the floor from their sudden combined weight. He barely caught its arm before sitting on it.

Brienne pulled away, leaning against the edge of the table instead. But they were holding hands. He looked up at her while covering her calloused palm with kisses and licks, taking pleasure not just in the hint of leather and steel taste of her but also in the undone braid and mouth swelled to twice its size from his kisses. She was wide-eyed and sweet-looking, confused, terrified.

“You will fight,” he whispered, kissing her palm deeply. “You have the blood of storm kings and dragonlords in you, Brienne. You have no need for a lion but this one will protect you and all you hold dear.”

“How are you mirrors of each other but so different?” She wondered out loud.

He had no answer to that. He didn’t know whether the veil had been lifted from Cersei’s face to show her true at last or if it had been him relieved of it.

He pulled Brienne’s hand to his face. Her touch was far from silk but there was no one he wanted more. She seemed to want his touch too because she moved closer until he was in her embrace, his face pressed against her stomach. He kissed her there, thinking of her child. Perhaps, after all the children he had failed to protect, he would fulfill vows with this one.

“I’d sprout trees from my very hands for ships if I could,” she murmured while brushing his hair with her fingers. “Turn my blood into iron and my breath fire for steel.”

“What would be left of my wench?”

He chuckled as she slapped him playfully on the head. Glad to have lightened her mood, he raised his head and looked at her. She bent and kissed him softly.

“You’ve not broken your fast yet. Come with me. Besides, there’s something I must show you anyway.”

They still held hands until she opened the door to lead them out of the library. Jaime kept his hands behind him while walking next to her. Once again he found himself walking down the hallway in which Tarths of the past glowered at him with their brilliant blue eyes.

“My lady. My lord. ” A young girl, short and slight approached them with cloaks. She was followed by two other women, one sturdier in form, the other the tallest of the three but with the top of her head just clearing past Brienne’s shoulder. Brienne bent her knees so they may wrap the cloak around her. Jaime did the same. As he fastened the buckles, he noticed that the women wore breeches and boots.

“I apologize for their age,” Brienne told him, red in the cheeks and blinking rapidly. He didn’t have to breathe deeply to detect the musty smell, nor squint so hard to see the hems were frayed and the stitches loose. “But they will keep us warm. Thank you,” she told the women, who curtsied before she excused them.

Jaime glanced at them while pulling his cloak closer. “Your handmaidens are in breeches.”

“Easier to accomplish tasks that way. Breeches use less fabric too. Skirts are heavy and long.” She smoothed the cloak on his shoulders. “Are you warm enough?”

“I am,” he answered as guards opened the doors.

She led him to a large yard, the lawn devoid of much green grass. At first glance, Jaime saw armored young lads and older men fighting until a closer look revealed the combatants included girls. Girls and women who looked to be Brienne’s age. They were dressed in tunics, breeches and boots.

And they were sparring. Sparring with only their bodies for weapons.

Jaime winced as a young girl, pinned to a wall by a boy her age, pulled her head back and slammed it surely on her opponent. The sound of cracking skull rose over the grunts and growls. Next, he saw a boy battling another boy and a girl. The girl seized him by neck from behind but he was quick to shove his elbow on her stomach and turn to punch her right in the face. As she fell, he bent and flung sand into the eyes of the other boy. The latter cried out and yelled as the boy’s foot landed firmly on his cock.

“What in seven hells is this?” He demanded.

“Until the queen’s last letter, we were forbidden from wielding arms. So we used our bodies and made them into weapons.” As Brienne was speaking, another boy cracked his skull against the forehead of another.

“That head-knocking thing. Someone taught them that. You captured me because of that. Who taught you?”

Brienne grinned. Big teeth shouldn’t make his heart flutter but they did. “Ser Goodwin, of course. And I didn’t use only my head.”

“Seven above, Brienne. Boys I can understand but the girls too? No man would want them with their broken nose and missing teeth.”

Her cheeks were suddenly red as apples. “It doesn’t stop you from fucking me.”

He paused in his tirade to look at her. The poor winter light did not help her at all. “No.” Even the tenderness in his tone surprised him. Lowering his tone, he added, “I’d fuck you all the time if I could.”

She gasped, thick lips parting and revealing the tip of a very pink tongue. It brought back memories of what her mouth had done to him. The places her tongue went. He coughed but it was useless stopping the familiar stirring in his breeches.

“You started it, wench.”

“I have never,” she hissed, looking even more flustered. She cast a frantic look around them, worried about being overheard before glaring at him, “said anything like that ever. Let alone think it.”

“Good. Just as I’m your first cock, so it should be I’m the first to hear you speak so shamelessly. May filth never leave your tongue, wench.”

It was very hard to stop himself from laughing as her sapphire eyes flashed with indignation. It was harder not to kiss her.

They walked past more soldiers-in-training grappling, in chokeholds, or just cracking their fists on each other’s faces. He also saw Goodwin instructing new recruits on how to disarm the enemy.

“The Dothraki use a long curved sword called the arakh,” he was saying, displaying a wooden model of the sword. “They are trained to fight on horseback but are just as brutal just on their feet. They learn to ride before walking, and in battle, they control the movements of the horse with the pressure of their knees, leaving their arms free to swing arakhs at the enemy. You must learn how to not only remove a Dothraki warrior from his horse but relieve him of his arakh too. ”

“That’s how you knocked me off my horse, didn’t you?” Jaime asked Brienne. She nodded.

“Goodwin taught me all the ways a proper knight should fight. It’s not the elegance of how you hold your sword that will save you. Form can only take you so far. Come. There’s food ahead.”

To Jaime’s surprise, the youths in charge of the food were his own squires. Peck and Garrett looked relieved to see him but frowned upon seeing his cloak.

“You forgot his cloak,” Peck scolded the younger squire. He was mortified seeing the crescents and moons all over his lord’s cloak. “My lord, I so apologize.”

“I saw to cleaning his lord’s boots and repairing them before he woke up. You should have seen to his cloak besides his clothes,” Garrett snapped. He bowed to Jaime too. “I am so sorry, my lord.”

“Lads,” Jaime warned them. At his tone, they quickly quieted and stood straight. He gave them a brief nod and turned to Brienne. “This is Lady Brienne Tarth, the Wardeness of the East. My lady, these are my squires, Josmyn Peckledon or Peck, as he prefers to be called, and Garrett Paege.”

“My lady,” the boys said, bowing respectfully.

“Ser Goodwin is quick to put you to work, isn’t he?” Jaime commented. “Good. What have we here?”

“Mummer’s turtle soup, my lord,” Peck replied. Jaime glanced at Brienne.

“I confess to never having heard of the dish before.”

“Turtle meat is scarce so we use calf’s head instead. The texture and flavor is close to turtle meat. We also put eggs. It’s quite delicious, I assure you. If you will allow me?” She took the ladle from Garrett and held out her hand for a bowl from Peck. Garrett removed the lid from the vat.

Brienne gave the soup a brief stir, sending a rich, savory aroma of spices, onions and a faint hint of lemon in the air. As Jaime sniffed appreciatively, she poured generous servings of the soup in the bowl. Then she scooped white balls from the vat and into his soup.

“Forcemeats,” she explained, handing him the bowl. “Normally we would use pork or game but we’ve made do with pike, salmon and clams.”

Peck handed Jaime a spoon and he dipped it in the soup. The meat was chewy and the soup tangy. The flavors and textures warred on his tongue but it was hot, wonderfully so. He put another spoonful in his mouth.

“It’s good,” he said. “My thanks, Lady Brienne.”

She ladled her own soup next. He couldn’t understand why the turn of her wrist and the careful way she poured soup in the bowl intrigued him. But they did.

They sat at a bench to watch the rest of the sparring. Winter was forgotten with every spoonful of the soup, the hollowness in their stomachs filled by hard rolls. Jaime felt Brienne’s embarrassment as she stammered about having to import flour due to the dead farmlands and farmers who have deserted them when winter stretched for another year. Under the table, he clasped her hand. She squeezed back.

What formality—or propriety, rather—that was stamped on every brick in the Red Keep seemed to have been swept away by the powerful currents of the sea in Tarth. Goodwin made hard demands of the recruits, and the soldiers and guards who have survived his lessons were harder on the younger recruits. Sparring with swords and insisting on perfect footwork were suddenly silly. Thus, Jaime gave Garrett and Peck permission to join the bone-breaking bloodsport.

Fascinated and still shocked at the style of fighting taught and the presence of women warriors, it didn’t hit Jaime immediately the true purpose behind these lessons. It explained shadow of grimness in Brienne’s eyes despite the look of her pride in her face.

“Your expect an invasion. You will take whatever bombardment Daenerys has planned.”

She sipped her ale before answering. “We don’t have enough horses, can not build ships, and then the embargo on arms that the queen just lifted. Even if we do build enough, it won’t be enough. Not in time. Our bodies are all we have.”

“The Dothraki—the sellswords—”

She shook her head. “We intend to use what few advantages we have. This is the first time Dothraki will cross what they call the poison water. I would think they won’t be well in the ship, especially with the winter storms. Fighting on sand is a lot different fighting on a field of grass. There’s also another group of fighters training in the water as we speak.”

“What do you intend to do? Swim away from the fight?”

“Of course not. Storms break ships in the sea all the time. Why can’t we provide a helping hand?”

Seeing him look even more grim, she looked around then quickly put a hand over his. “Jaime, you of all of people should understand this. You told me to fight my way out of Cersei’s terms. This is how. It’s all my people and I have. If I can secure a victory without ships, that should satisfy her.”

He didn’t know whether to kiss or throttle her. So he nodded instead, squeezing her hand before she pulled away.

After the meal, Brienne invited him to see Tarth with her. “Ser Jaime would accompany me to the port and my other visits for the day,” she informed Goodwin. “But I shall see you for our afternoon spar.”

Goodwin bowed. “Very good, my lady.” To Jaime, he said, “Have a care with my lady.”

“Overprotective, isn’t he,” Jaime drawled when Goodwin left. “Yet he lets you swim in the ocean in the dark by yourself.”

“Because I need to regain my strength. Sparring and riding are not enough.” She hesitated then added, “I am also leading the command of our water force.”

“Captain Brienne, then?”

“Not quite.”

They rode for the port, passing through frost-crusted wastelands that she said used to be green and lush with olive trees as far as the eye could see. He asked about the stone houses dotted on these lands and she said many were deserted. The few animals grazing the ground were left behind. Judging from loosened skins hanging over their bony frames, it had been a while since they last fed.

The port area saw less activity compared to his arrival. A few stalls remained open, selling at exorbitant prices apricots, apples, carrots and spinach—the scarcity of the local vegetables driving up the price. Figs, pomegranates and spices, imported from Essos and expensive to begin with, were priced even higher. There wasn’t much fish sold. Jaime noticed the few trading vessels dragged to sand. They were old but judged some could still be seaworthy and fixed to become a warship. Their number was far, far less than a thousand and he doubted there were even enough ships throughout the region that could reach that number.

He shouldn’t think it but the answer was as clear and bright as a summer’s day. Cersei wouldn’t lose the Seven Kingdoms _to_ Daenerys Targaryen.

“Storms are even more unpredictable and it’s become too risky and only being able to catch so few,” Brienne said, noticing where his attention had gone. “Once in a while a few fishermen are brave enough. That’s why we have fish in the castle now. Meat is even harder to come by. All food, if you don’t have much coin, is difficult to get.”

Jaime believed her. Every person at the stall counted each coin, and it wasn’t unusual to remove a few more vegetables or fruit from the sack after being weighed. Children milled about, their faces smudged and cheeks shrunken. He also noticed how people mingled easily—no one gave the foreigners a wide berth. There were no whispers or suspicious glances.

He thought to remark about what he’d noticed back in the castle. “You have people in your employ that aren’t from Westeros. Like the woman with the cloaks. The soldiers you’re training as well.”

“Is there reason to suspect them of anything untoward?” She asked, incredulous. “They live here, Jaime. Some of them were even born here. It matters not what skin color they have or if they can’t speak the Common Tongue or trip all over it. As long as they’re within the borders of the Stormlands, they have my protection. Entitled to the same rights as anyone born and raised here. They’re as much of Westeros as you and I are.”

She then ducked in a bread shop. When she emerged, she had two sacks of rolls. She tied one around her saddle and opened the other. Fresh steam rose. She called on the children on the street, inviting them to take as much as they needed. The sack was quick to empty.

“As much as they need?” Jaime asked once they were back on the horses. “Not just a piece for themselves?”

“Those rolls are likely the only meal they would have for the day, until I return. I can’t begrudge a child for wanting more than one piece of the bread while I still have three meals despite all the rationing.” She urged the horse forward into a trot and he followed. “I’ve tried to find work for as many people as possible in the castle, and once a day food is delivered to the motherhouse. But people wish to plant. They want to fish. How can they do that here? In a way, it helps when they leave. I can only hope they find much better fortune elsewhere. Those that stay. . .well, it’s my duty to at least keep them from starving to death.”

She took him to what used to be a forest next. Except for a few cluster of trees, it was a barren wasteland of more frost and the sharp stench of death and decay. They galloped past animal carcasses.

“There’s something I wish to show you.” Brienne said after a while. She stopped before a tree with a trunk no thicker than her waist. The branches were thinner than fingers. As she tied the reins around one, a strong, chilly wind blew, shaking the dried leaves off the tree. They fell like black rain.

Jaime tied his horse next to hers, watching as she took the sack of what he assumed were rolls, another pack and wineskin. She pointed at the hill ahead of them. “We’re going there. The ground is loose so it’s better to go up on foot than with horses.”

“You think being on foot is safer?” He looked up. “That’s quite a climb.”

“If you’re not used to it,” she agreed. “Trust me. A horse can easily dislodge stone and more with just its weight.” 

So he followed her. Because of the thinning air and his own body unprepared for the climb, he was panting about halfway through. Brienne suggested they pause for a few breaths. He glared at her.

She rolled her eyes. “I should’ve known better than to ask.”

“Now you do,” he retorted.

She shook her head at him then trudged forward. Again he followed her. She pointed out where spices used to grow, and what were once vineyards. He had little interest in plants and herbs, let alone the families that used to grow them and how they used to send the first crop to Evenfall Hall.

But he liked the sound of her voice. There was a deep, rich quality to it that made him think of tales told by candlelight—sagas of adventure of course, of heroes and the world set right again. The way the wind loosened more strands from her braid reminded him of corn silk, though when he caught a lock between his fingers it felt more like hay. It drove him to touch her even more, reaching up and drawing her to a halt as he brushed the errant hairs away from her pink, freckled face.

“I-I can never keep it neat,” she stammered, pale eyelashes fluttering as looked at the ground. Her blush spread to what little of her throat was exposed by the cloak clasped around it. “My septa probably taught me how to keep my hair flat but my mind was always far away whenever she spoke of those things. And dances.”

“I’m not so sure,” he thought to tease. “I prefer a wench with hair a riotous bird’s nest than a plait. Fuck dances that don’t involve swords.”

Her smile was tentative, looking like a grimace, but it made him smile back. He pulled her by the belt with both hands until her breath warmed his nose and cheeks. Then he pulled her down for a kiss.

She was still shy and breathed too quickly and loudly through their kiss. But she was learning. And eager. Her hand on his chest was nice. The firm curve of her ass under his hand felt much nicer.

The kissing came to a sudden halt when Brienne, probably looking past him, suddenly let out a squeal. She pushed him away quite roughly, sending him spinning until he steadied himself. He saw her on one knee on the ground, picking through a clump of a rare green patch.

“Watercress!” She exclaimed. He cocked an eyebrow as she tore a leaf and put it right on her mouth. Rapture softened her face, making her look as if she were throes of another beautiful release in his arms. She tore more leaves and put them in her mouth. “Jaime, you have to taste this. Here. Come here.”

He would rather watch her but couldn’t refuse. She put a couple of leaves in his mouth. Her eyes shone while he chewed. The peppery taste was a startling but welcome flavor. “Do you like it? It’s good, is it not?” She was gathering more and putting them in the sack. “I wish so much for tomatoes right now. But we have some cheese and the rolls so they’ll do nicely.”

Her enthusiasm was unexpected and he liked watching her fill the sack with the watercress. He liked it even better when she took his hand and together continued their way up the hill.

When was the last time something as innocent as hand-holding had been so pleasing? Oh, he was on fire for her. He was sure to become the first kingslayer in history with a running chance to become a saint given the control he clung to. It was the easiest thing in the world to drop his breeches and sink his hard cock in Brienne’s mouth. He wanted to so much. But he also wanted to keep her gloved hand in his. She felt good this way as well.

It shouldn’t be so strange but it was. He didn’t mislike it.

“Here we are.” Brienne announced, holding her billowing cloak closer to her body. “I give you Tarth.”

Jaime stood next to her and turned to look. He caught his breath.

High above the ground, winter’s fury on the island seemed a bad dream rather than a reality. The empty, barren fields from which weeds had begun to poke and grow from the cracks still looked as desolate. He had no trouble imagining the vastness of green fields only two years ago. He saw the ocean surrounding them, again of a gray not unlike a sword. How blue the water must have been.

“I used to come here as a child after sparring. It was so peaceful out here. Nothing could touch me. I didn’t think about Evenfall Hall or even my chambers when I returned here following my wedding. I thought only of this place. When I found myself pregnant, I dreamed of bringing my child here once old enough.”

“Did you?” Jaime could see the little boy as if he were standing right there with them. He too would be in awe, seeing with his own eyes the entirety of the island that would be his dominion someday.

She looked sad. “When Lyonel returns I intend to.”

“He would love it,” he promised her.

“You think so?” She asked. She sounded so young at that moment, despite the early age lines around her eyes.

“I know he will,” he whispered as she leaned her forehead on his.

She was the one to begin a kiss this time. Thick, soft lips taking his mouth in a succession of nibbles that made him breathe fast and cling to her. He pulled her from the edge, rubbing his lips against hers while relieving her of the packs and the wineskin. Again he pulled her by the belt, pressing closely to her body until the buckles and even stitches of her clothes were stamped on him.

He lowered himself on the ground and gently tugged her with him. Moved so she was under him.

As she caressed his hair, his chest, lowered a hand to the middle of his back, grasped his ass with surprising possessiveness, he swept her cloak aside to fondle her breasts through her clothes. Feeling only their slight curves, he cursed.

“Let me,” she grunted, sitting up. Pale, nimble fingers unclasped her cloak, another of her mundane movements that captivated him for a few breaths before grabbing her face to take her mouth. He thought she laughed against his lips. His hands swept through her hair before wrapping an arm around her back. She undid the ties of her coat then her doublet.

“Jaime, I can’t—” 

“What?” He groaned, pulling away. Her braid was gone, clothes now half open to reveal freckled throat and the top of her chest. “You don’t want this?” He clutched at her nape. _“Me?”_

“It’s not that I—I—you want to fuck me.” She looked panicked. “Don’t-don’t you?”

“Seven hells, yes—” he started kissing her again but her hand on his chest stopped him.

“Then—you have to—” A blush the color of cherries suddenly exploded in her cheeks. It was fever and fire on his hand. “I need to—you must—” She blinked rapidly, the force of her blinking enough for her eyelashes to fan a significant gust of wind towards him. “I need to undress.””

“Oh.” No four words had been so wonderful until now. He grabbed her by the belt. “I’ll help.”

Her laugh startled him. “Jaime,” she whispered in his ear as he wrestled with the buckle. “I want to do this.”

“You told me. It pleases me to know you want me to fuck you too.”

“I meant—” she stilled his hands. She was a darker shade of cherry. Her eyes had a silvery glint not unlike diamonds. “I want to undress myself.”

So she stood up, wheat hair blowing behind her, striping over her neck and swollen lips. She shrugged off her coat, undid the rest of the ties of her doublet.

The swiftness of her movements faltered when she realized she was down to her tunic. And her breeches. Her boots. Jaime’s eyes softened at the spark of her uncertainty in her eyes before they dropped to the ground. As her face turned a vivid shade of tomato, he took her by hand and pulled her back to the ground.

He laid her on their discarded cloaks then grasped the edge of her tunic. She nodded and raised her arms.

Raising the tunic, he glimpsed the soft, white expanse of her stomach, scattered faintly with freckles too. The higher it went, the more freckles there were. He hadn’t noticed them much last night. What little daylight there was showed freckles splashed all over her breasts. His mouth was open and his tongue swirling around a puffy pink nipple before he realized what he was doing.

She gasped, clutching at his hair. _“Jaime.”_

Throaty moans and tight quivers were his rewards for the relentless, indulgent suckling of her nipples. Gods above, but she was delicious. Warm. Woman. _Pink._ He kept his mouth wrapped around her as they pulled off her tunic. She tasted like pink. On and on he suckled as if to draw milk.

Thinking of her breasts heavy with milk hardened his cock even more. Brienne must have felt it against her thigh because she murmured, “Maybe you should. . .remove your breeches.”

“Splendid,” he groaned, dragging the nipple roughly between his teeth once more. His hand played with her other breast, pinching and pulling at the wet nipple. Her breathing became shallower. More frantic. His heart was racing as well. Winter was all but a trail of goosebumps on his spine. All he cared about was touching and taking as much of Brienne as he could in any way he could.

He licked up her neck, falling heavily on her upon reaching her mouth. She spread her legs and he sank between them, rubbing against her cunt. He tried to remember what she’d just said about his breeches, and how it also applied to her breeches but he was lost. Lost in her warm mouth, in her arms. The feel of her breasts under his palm.

As their tongues tangled and fever wrapped around his head, he felt her hands between their bodies, fingers dragging his tunic from the waistband of his breeches, fingers tugging at the laces. “Brienne,” he gasped as the opening of his breeches widened once the laces were loosened. His cock brushed her stomach.

“Please.” She sounded tearful while taking hold of him. He hissed. _“Jaime, please.”_

Her fingers were starburst and flames and every unnamed, good thing on his cock. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. “Wench, slow—”

It was too late. He slammed both hands right next to her shoulders, roaring as his cock spilled on her stomach. Her motions didn’t falter; she kept milking him, lips sucking on his tensed neck as he rolled and jerked into her touch. The long slide of her tongue up and down his throat had him shuddering into the last throes of release.

Spent, he smiled drunkenly and fell next to her on his back. A dark sky loomed over them. He breathed deeply. Ice, sea and the musk of spent sex filled him. He was cold and had just come all over Brienne like a green boy but they hardly mattered. Somehow, he thought, in this world of frost and gray, everything was beautiful.

He heard shuffling and turned to see Brienne sitting up and pushing her arm into the sleeve of her coat. She stood up and finished dressing, not bothering to close the coat. Then she started gathering sticks scattered about.

Jaime blinked a few times to believe what he was seeing. He was still fully dressed except for his open breeches, cock flopped to the left. “Wench. What’re you doing?”

“We still have a few hours before it gets completely dark but it’s cold. Wine won’t be enough to warm us, not while we’re out and up here. Get the food from the sack.”

She didn’t seem angry or even a touch annoyed that he’d had pleasure. She actually meant to start the fire. Off she gathered more sticks, arranging them on a spot she’d chosen once there was enough. She rubbed two stones three times to spark a fire.

“Brienne.”

She crouched as low as her long legs allowed to bring the fire to the sticks and fan them. He sighed.

“Forget the fire.” Now she looked at him. “Come here.” Lowering his tone, he added, “Finish undressing and come to me.”

She genuinely looked puzzled while slowly standing up. “Jaime, we need to eat.”

He stared at the juncture between her thighs. “I know exactly what I want. Are you hungry?”

“Yes, a little—aren’t you?”

“I’ll survive. Here. I’ll undress too.”

He got up to remove the coat, tossing it with little care to his feet before going for the laces of his tunic. As he yanked it over his head, he glimpsed the dumbfounded expression on her face. The next item of clothing fluttered to his feet. Then he sat on a boulder to pull off his boots.

Brienne picked up his clothes, putting them in a pile with their cloaks before securing them with rocks. As he tossed away one boot, he said, “Care to catch up, wench?”

Her giggle wasn’t girlish but more between a snort and neighing. Then she pulled off the coat and joined him at the boulder to remove her boots. He grinned, catching her briefly by the chin for a kiss before continuing to undress.

As soon as the rest of their clothes were pinned by rocks, they threw themselves at each other. Being bigger and heavier, Brienne easily sent him to the ground, but her arms cushioned Jaime’s head and most of his back from the fall. He pushed his fingers through her hair, giving her his mouth and wrapping his leg around her hip.

They rolled on the ground, frantically kissing and touching as much of each other without having to be too far apart. They stopped when he was on top of her a third time. This time she wrapped her leg high around his hip, its heavy weight pressing his cock against her pubic bone. Their hairs made rough, rustling sounds rubbing against each other. Her palm drifted to his chest, her gentle motions on the fur covering it emitting whispers.

He grasped this hand of hers, turning from their kiss to rub his lips on her wrist, toward the sensitive crevice webbed with bluish veins, then her shoulder. He took deep whiffs under her arm while nuzzling the pale cluster of hair there. She chuckled and lurched against him, the sound of her mirth melting into a moan when his cock rubbed between her folds. She was soaked.

His mouth watering, he moved quickly until his breath stirred the sodden blond jungle between her thighs, and all he saw was this and the pink pillar peeking from between her folds. She smelled of leather and sweat. Groaning, he thumbed her open to drink the syrupy heaven dripping from her cunt.

“My—Seven— _Jaime_.” Her shriek was no different than a battle cry charging for enemy lines. Her hips thrust, thighs quivered as legs thrashed but his marauding tongue didn’t lose rhythm inside her. The wench was better than anything he’d ever tasted, from spiced meats to the juiciest, sweetest fruits. She was so good it made him think of seeking the septon for confession.

But he was already prostrated, a man surrendering himself. Every thrust and flick of his tongue was a prayer. For grace. For redemption.

He scooped her hips up from the ground, angling them. He pressed his face deeper against her cunt, rubbing his bearded cheeks on her slick, inner folds. Slurping. Drinking. _Father keep her safe._ So she may live. So he could go on knowing she did.

Her cry of release sent birds taking off in frantic flight. Jaime pulled away to take a breath before pressing his face right back against her cunt, this time tonguing the stiff pink pearl. She quivered and moaned. Thighs squeezed his head.

Jaime managed to pull away long enough to take hold of his cock. Looking at Brienne’s soft, flushed face, her nipples stiff, gleaming points, he rubbed and aimed his seed on her stomach. She watched him through half-closed eyes, finger swiping at one of the sticky streams before sliding it in her cunt. Just seeing it sent a fresh burst of seed toward her breasts.

Boneless, he collapsed next to her. She turned to him. She looked pleased too.

“I want to fuck you. I just can’t seem to discipline myself long enough until I’m inside you,” he said.

“Is that why you—” she gestured at the stains all over her breasts and stomach. He nodded.

“Maybe it’s just as well.” He sighed. “The last thing you need is a bastard.”

Brienne said nothing. Jaime caressed her thigh. Some men were meant to be kings, knights, food for worms. His path had always been clear—once. The farther he drifted from Cersei, the hazier it got.

He wondered if fatherhood could even be possible for someone like him. To be a real father, not just seed to quicken in a womb.

Unbelievably, he thought of Cersei. They had been trying for years, with no success. Now that they could have children, children that would take his name, they became more and more something of a dream.

His fate was probably to sire bastards. Only in the dark, in secret, did his seed seem to bloom.

Brienne playing with the hairs on his chest drew attention back to her.

“There’s no need to worry about bastards.” He watched her kiss his shoulder, closing his eyes when she nuzzled his neck then ear. Then she returned to his side.

“Jaime, I’m barren.”

He opened his eyes, frowning. “You have a son.”

“Lyonel is all I’m meant to have.”

She turned on her back while saying it, eyes to the sky. He lay on his side, taking in the high line of her nose before it curved in a round, bulbous tip, the outline of her thick lips, the powerful jaw that dipped into a long, curving throat before the slight rise of her chest. He moved closer, hugging her around the stomach. She turned away from the sky and looked at him, resting a hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry.”

She held his arm tighter. He kissed her on the cheek.

“It’s for the best,” she whispered. He believed the conviction behind her words but the quiver in her chin told of her struggle to say it. “Given how. . .with the difficulties being married to Humfrey, it’s best to not have any more children. I was barely able to protect Lyonel from the truth. What if I had a daughter, Jaime? I hated that Lyonel was forced to leave and squire so far away but he didn’t get to see what Humfrey was like. A daughter stays within the walls of the castle until she has her first moonblood. I can’t have any child of mine thinking my husband’s treatment of me is right.”

“If she’s anything like you, she’ll learn to fight and right wrongs.” He assured her.

His words seemed to make her sadder. He wrapped her in his arms, covering her face with gentle kisses until he felt the soft flex of her cheeks when she gave a little smile. She sighed and hugged him back, pulling him closer with her leg around his hip. Then she kissed him.

Time went unnoticed through the kiss, and winter, for a while, was a distant memory. When they finally came up for air, light was just faint slivers of white dashed with gray in the sky. The wind stirred the hairs on their legs, reminding them of the cold.

Brienne kissed him on the forehead and sat up. That was when Jaime felt a strange slickness on his stomach and thighs. The same marks were on her. His mouth opened to apologize but she cupped his cheek then stood up.

Clothes were passed between them as they got dressed. Every time their fingers touched, she flushed and tried to hunch her shoulders to hide it. Once dressed, they sat down for a meal.

As she munched on food made of bread with watercress and a wedge of cheese in between, he asked about her son. Her eyes brightened.

“Ser Addam Marbrand writes that Lyonel is a natural with the sword. Lyonel also writes to me every moon. His writing is much improved. He still struggles with interchanging letters but his errors are significantly less. The maester he had—a maester Humfrey found from Seven only knows where—” she made a face—“had no patience with him. Lyonel is a touch unpredictable, that is true, but never ill-mannered. Never a trying presence.”

“Interchanging letters when reading and writing will always be with him, I’m afraid.” Jaime told her. “It’s why I think I’m such an ill choice for master of laws. All those spelling errors.” He shook his head. “I never understood how one could find much pleasure in reading. Tyrion reads until all the candles go out.”

Speaking of Tyrion was painful. If he were dead, Jaime hoped he had gone peacefully.

“You’ve not heard word?”

“No.” He poked the fire with a stick, seeing it flare high then recede just as quickly and suddenly. “It’s better like that. A letter would reveal his whereabouts and Cersei means to take his head. So, Lyonel is good with the sword? Just like his mother.”

She blushed. “He can choose sword or quill, vial, for all I care. As long as he’s happy. But I admit I look forward to sparring with him. Sharing with him what I know.” Staring in the horizon, she murmured, “It hurts each day he’s not here. I thought it would get easier. I’m not the first mother whose son went away to squire. But no one speaks of it so I assumed there’d be no pain at some point.”

“I met him.” At Brienne’s look of concern, Jaime asked, “Addam said it upset you when told he intended that detour.”

“You know why. Lyonel’s life was only spared because of your intervention. House Lannister is still feared for the slaughter of the soldiers of Houses that fought against yours.” Brienne’s hand wandered to her stomach, drawing his eyes there. “I don’t know how you convinced the queen to listen but you have my gratitude for as long as I live.”

“Hey.” He put his hand over hers. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. I just wish—”

“What?”

“I could have done more. I murdered Aerys to save people. But when it came to saving the truly innocent, all I managed was save one. When I was knighted, I was charged to be brave. To protect the helpless and the innocent.”

“You are. You did.” Brienne stroked his jaw while looking in his eyes. “That one life you saved kept another.”

She kissed him, her mouth a soft, passionate press. Then another and more, until they were once again stretched out by the fire, pulling at ties, wrestling with buckles. They kept their tunics on, but Jaime yanked off her breeches and boots. He pulled his breeches only far down enough to do what was needed.

Jaime’s world went from dark to light as Brienne rode him. The soft squelch of her cunt stretching to fit around him every time she pressed down dragged groans of pleasure from his throat. He kept a hand under her tunic, playing with her breast as the other gripped her waist.

They hit their release together, his shout blending with her grunts. When she fell on him, he feared she’d broken his ribs.

But broken bones would mend, if there were any, he thought, kissing her cheek. There were only so many chances to hold her until his departure.

As she got dressed a while later, Jaime remarked, “Your son is beautiful. You’re right to be proud of him.”

“There’s hardly a parent who doesn’t take pride in her child, Jaime.” She said smiling while pulling up a boot.

“Then thank the gods you’ve never met Tywin Lannister. That man—” He paused to gather his thoughts. “There’s no pleasing him.”

He picked up his discarded sword belt, securing it around the waist. When he looked up, Brienne seemed riveted by the ruby eyes of the lion from the hilt. He sighed. “From Tywin.”

“It looks very beautiful. I would think he was very pleased when he had it made for you.”

He drew out the sword and she got to her feet, riveted by the crimson and black ripples of the blade. He handed it to her and she held it reverently. She grasped the hilt while running the tip of her finger up the steel. Her eyes glimmered then she gave it an experimental swing.

“How did you get this much Valyrian steel?”

“Ned Stark’s sword.”

Regret came immediately. Brienne lowered the sword and handed it back to him. As he sheathed it, she went to sit on a rock. “Fathers aren’t the easiest to please, are they?”

“I can’t disagree with you,” he said, joining her. “Humfrey was kind to Lyonel, I hope?”

“If you call him hardly bothering with Lyonel, then yes. It’s a kindness, I suppose. The only time he held Lyonel was after he was born and no more. Perfection is elusive in life and if you can’t see it, can’t have any appreciation for it, you don’t deserve anything good.” Her eyes softened. “Lyonel was born perfect.”

“I’ll take your word for it, wench. But if I may, Lyonel is just about close to perfect.” She frowned and he leaned close, licking her lips. “He doesn’t have your eyes. Cruel of you to keep your sapphire eyes to yourself.”

She blinked. “He-He has his father’s eyes.”

“He would look better with yours.” He caressed a shadow under her stare. “The freckles almost make up for them.”

She let out a shaky laugh, sweetly flustered. Her smile showed the faint crinkles at the corners of her eyes. As he caressed them, she murmured, “He-He hates freckles. Hopes to outgrow them.”

“You grew but certainly haven’t outgrown them,” he teased before kissing those marks on her cheeks and along her chin. “More places to kiss.”

He turned her head and captured her lips softly. They kissed and again, time didn’t matter. The world may have ended and begun again and they were still on this hill, kissing.

As Jaime threw dirt on the fire, he looked up at her. She was tying the sack closed. “I hope he’s not too grown or too old the next time you see him. You should be able to hold him without having to count the days before letting him go once again.”

“I hope so as well. Thank you, Jaime.”

They climbed down the hill and got back on their horses. Upon reaching the castle, they went their separate ways—Brienne for her afternoon spar with Ser Goodwin and Jaime to see to his squires and guards. He also had a raven sent to King’s Landing informing of his arrival in the isle, and the death of his three guards. As the sun began to depart, one of Brienne’s guards furnished him with a sealed note. It was from her, asking him to meet her in the cove.

He was smiling during the ride and was smiling even more when he found her just as she was tying her horse to a tree. There was no stopping her from the swim. But she promised to spar with him.

His stay, intended only for a couple of days at most, stretched to thirteen. Storms besieged Tarth beginning on his seventh day. The wind howled so that even the thick marble walls of the castle couldn’t muffle them. The might of it seemed a thousand or more, tearing off rooftops, snatching tapestries and taking some paintings off the walls.

But a more ferocious series of storms took place in the chamber of the Moonmaid. Jaime and Brienne were insatiable, hardly keen for their bodies to be unfused even for a few moments in the night. The winds drowned out their cries, the furniture that bumped repeatedly against the wall. His tongue hardly left her mouth and cunt, her mouth and cunt stubborn grips around his cock. The day pulled them apart but confined as they were within the fortress of marble, they still found each other and retreated in tight, secret corners. He fucked her at times without kisses to sweeten her first because she was still drenched and slick with his seed from the night before. Sometimes they didn’t fuck but some clothes were still removed; through their husky chatter of nothings and playful reprimands about sword care and fighting stances, he kept fingers in her and she kissed him between words.

This peace in the storm came to an end when a half-dead man staggered into Evenfall Hall weeping about mountains and hills that have collapsed and rolled to houses nearby, trapping people. Brienne quickly ordered all strong and able-bodied members of her household, from her personal guards to scullion, to prepare for rescue. She led the charge, Jaime and his men right behind her. Rain and hail pelted them through the ride, and through the following days when they dug through earth to find what few survivors there were.

More dead were recovered than alive. A woman he’d pulled out was taken by the Stranger as soon as she took a breath. And a child. A little girl. Jaime continued to hold her even when she’d grown stiff and Orlyn had to pry her from him. The relentless rain meant they could only dig when it stopped and had to leave quickly as soon as it returned, else they’d be the next bodies to be recovered.

The maester and the few healers around immediately gave aid to the few lives saved but much of their time went into cleaning the bodies of the dead. Goodwin ensured there were people to take over whenever someone had passed out from exhaustion. There was little food and drink but no one was left unfed.

When the gods decided to give them the small mercy of a reprieve from thunderstorms, Jaime and the other men catching their breath retreated to one of the tents. Peck handed him a cup of hot tea and he thanked the squire.

“You’ve done great work, lad,” he said, noting that his face was splattered with mud and his fingers stained with blood. “But I order you to have those cuts cleaned by the maester. Much as there’s a nice ring being called The Fingerless Knight, you can’t exactly grasp a sword.”

Peck looked at his hands and made a hissing sound. “I didn’t even realize, ser.”

“Go.” Jaime nodded at him. “Now.”

He sipped the tea and lifted a flap, peering out. At that moment, he saw Brienne surrounded by her handmaidens. One held a basin and the other a pitcher, the third a basket. The conversation seemed tense until Brienne put one hand on the shoulder of the woman with a basket and gestured at the crowd behind them. The three women seemed to hesitate but curtsied before leaving.

Alone, Jaime got a better look at her. She couldn’t see him but he saw the mud on her hair and face, her clothes. Her coat was torn. She looked in the direction where the women had gone before turning to stagger into one of the stone houses. Jaime all but dropped his cup rushing to her.

“Brienne?” He called out, ducking inside. It was dark and smelled damp. The floors were covered in dust, leaves and twigs that crackled under his boots. He saw a rectangular wooden table with benches, a fireplace with several missing bricks before finding the narrow frame of a cot.

“Jaime?” Her voice was small and cracked at the end of his name. She was sat on it, shoulders hunched.

“How are you?” He sat beside her and swept locks of her hair from her cheek. The bed creaked under their combined weight. The cloth covering the mattress, a patchwork of various patterns and color, was torn, revealing straw.

She shook her head, shoulders dropping even more. “I don’t know. I should be tired because I don’t remember the last time I’ve slept. My stomach should hurt because I can’t remember the last time I ate either. I should weep because I’ve never seen so many dead before their time.”

He put an arm around her and she sighed, dropping her head on his shoulder. “It’s too much,” she whispered.

“It is.” He kissed her, mud and all.

“Twenty-seven people dead. Mothers. Children.” 

There was no word that could aptly describe the devastation of the families left behind. It was too much, he agreed. Twenty-seven people who slept and never woke up. Maybe it was mercy. He was enraged on behalf of those left behind. Because however the Stranger had come, it had still taken lives. Lives that shouldn’t have been taken. Yet.

Brienne extricated herself from his arms and stood up. He felt the drag and labor in her movements. “I should go back. See to the families—”

“You can barely stand as it is.” It was testament to her exhaustion how easily he was able to pull her back on the bed. “The last thing we need is you falling sick. Rest.”

“It is oddly effortful putting one foot in front of the other,” she admitted. She looked at him. She was pale and her eyes had lost their brilliance. “Oh, Jaime. What would I have done without you?”

Then she kissed him. Rather than flinching from the taste of death and earth on her lips, he kissed her back hungrily. How could he not? She was warm. Alive. After days of numbing himself from every lifeless body uncovered in order to dig and find more, he felt something.

He was alive too.

As he gripped her by the nape and pulled at the buckles of her coat, her hand fell on the placket of his trousers. He breathed loudly as she squeezed his cock, her touch surprisingly gentle but also firm. She mumbled his name through the thrusts of his tongue in her mouth, all while pulling at the laces of his breeches to wrap her hand around his hard length.

He seized her face with both hands, groaning in her mouth as her calloused grip introduced a new sensation to his cock.

“Was right to call you wench,” he whispered in between licking and devouring her.

She grunted. Instead of her grip softening, she rubbed him more firmly, his foreskin becoming an extension of the pleasure she introduced. He kissed her harder.

The darkness falling outside the window went unnoticed the deeper the kiss went, the harder they held each other. Brienne broke away suddenly, leaving him too stunned to have any other reaction except to blink and watch her slip to the floor, put herself between his thighs. Her eyes shone a dark, lusty blue, but also soft with desire. They looked at each other as she rubbed him again.

He was shaking, remembering all too well the last time he’d been touched like this—the pleasure Cersei had forced on him through Taena. The dark gray of light that was all of daytime was beginning to swoop over the land, to shroud it in complete darkness again. Never had he need the sapphire light of her eyes even more. His only light in the growing darkness.

“Brienne---” The plea died in his lips when she turned away to take him in her mouth. He fought to keep his eyes open, terrified of what he might see, remember. The firm pull of her lips, his cock sliding back and forth her tongue, kept him here. In this stone house. In this moment. With her. Only she could touch him.

 _“Brienne.”_ Her name was a dream spoken to life this time. His fingers pushed through her damp hair until he could take firm hold of her head. His moans and her wet slurps made a song.

When he opened his eyes, the last of the light was a pale slash over her face. She was watching him. So he watched her. Watched as she retreated and pursed her lips, freeing his cock as she caught her breath before opening her big mouth to take him again. Groans and watery kisses filled the room again, this time accompanied by loud plops of her saliva on the floor.

He grunted feeling that familiar tightening foretelling his squirt. Her mouth was so fused to his cock it took a sharp pull to just coax her away inch by inch. As the world began to grow dark faster than their frantic breathing, she suddenly blurted out, “Please.”

“What?”

“I need you, Jaime.” She shook his hand away from her hair. “Please. I—I need to feel. I need to—I just—”

She didn’t finish. Rather she mouthed him again, her eyes closing. An expression of soft, pure rapture was his last glimpse of her face before darkness swopped in and he at last spilled in her.

Tried as he did to see, all he saw was the outline of her shoulder. He was slave to pure sensation: the wet, tight glove of her mouth, her loud, urgent slurps, the calloused twists and turns of her fingers at the base of his cock and her other hand burning through his breeches, the scrape of the heel of his boot on the floorboards while the latter groaned and squeaked under her weight.

The loud plops of her saliva and probably his own seed escaped her determined mouth. He found her hair, twisting, fisting it as he growled, “Please.” This time it was him trying to put into words all his heart yearned for using the only words in existence. They were not enough.

And then she let him go. He knew it as soon as the cold air took over the warmth still lingering from her mouth. He half-lay on the bed, blinking at the blackness above him while listening to her swallow and rise. Then heard her move.

“Where are you going?” He asked, sitting up. Trying to see still.

“I’ll go find us some food though it’s scarce. Firewood as well.”

“You stay here.” He pulled up and redid the laces of the breeches as he got to his feet. “Rest.”

He managed to locate where she was by the sound of her breathing and the smell of mud and dirt. Perhaps he smelled himself. He pawed the air until his fingers fluttered on the cold buckle of her belt. He pulled her to him by it, stopping only as their chests collided.

His lips traveled up her neck before she bent and gave him her mouth. Her lips were swollen and her tongue still wet and thick with his seed. He groaned and kissed her hard, wishing to imprint himself on her this way. She gasped but kissed him back.

“Rest,” he repeated, reluctantly pulling away. “I’ll go find those things.”

Still feeling quite like a drunk from his pleasure, he stumbled out of the stone house and nearly sent Garrett and the boy’s buckets of water to the ground.

“My lord, I apologize,” he said hastily.

“Not your fault. What’s the water for?”

“To make a dressing, ser.” Garrett seemed to hesitate. “I’m sorry for not being around when you needed me, ser.”

Jaime patted him on the head. “There was greater need of you elsewhere. But as soon as you’re done with those, bring me firewood and start a fire there.” He pointed at the house with his thumb. “Try not to disturb the Lady Brienne.”

Garrett nodded. “At once, ser.”

“Have you had food?”

“My lord?”

“Food. I know it’s scarce but make sure you’ve eaten before you sleep.” Jaime sighed. “If any of us will be able to get some sleep. I order it, Garrett.”

The boy nodded again, his red curls bouncing. “I shall, my lord. Thank you.”

Jaime managed to procure some hard dark bread and small salted fish. He barely noticed let alone heard the cries of those the dead had left behind, the few survivors staring off into space, their soups or breads forgotten. After doing nothing else but dig and shout for the longest two days of his life, he was desperate to go away inside.

But he couldn’t. Not when Brienne was falling to pieces. _She needs me._

He stepped back into the house, glad to see the fireplace now flickering with fire and lending much-needed warmth to the space. He put the sack on the table, thinking how in Tarth he had not one single brick, not one grain of sand to his name yet—

One look at Brienne bathed in the light of the fire, looking so much like the warrior maiden that had come to him in Harrenhal, was all he needed to know exactly where he belonged.

There was so much despair and loss all around that he could taste them, and years after he would still know, for what happened in Tarth will not just be memory but carved in his bones, written on his soul. Despair and loss but also this peace of seeing Brienne nude from the waist up, arms raised to squeeze a trickle of water from the washcloth. He stared at the long line of her back studded with droplets, the damp hairs under her arms that looked like strands of wet gold, her breasts, her soft stomach from which water gleamed like a jewel from the navel.

He must have made a sound—a shuffle with his boot, a sigh, maybe he’d whispered her name. She was soon staring back at him, the washcloth clutched to her breasts.

Some of the dirt had been scrubbed from her face but she’d missed a few spots. He didn’t care. He was just enthralled.

She put away the washcloth, lowering her arms. He removed his cloak and went for the ties of his coat. They watched each other dispense with clothes. She was faster, having less to remove. Rather than help him, she continued to stand by the basin and be bathed by the flickering fire, looking big and strong, a warrior with her scars and bruises, his maiden for always with the high thrust of her little breasts and the thick, wild tangle of curls gating her cunt. She was whole in her pain and resolve for another day of fighting, in whatever ways remained.

Free of clothes, he walked to the bed. So did she. She was the first to climb in, stretching fully on her stomach on the narrow cot. He climbed on top of her, straddling her hips to press kiss after kiss on her nape and shoulders. He licked every droplet from her. She sighed and cooed, arching softly and thrusting against the mattress with a sensuousness he’d never seen before. He caressed the sides of her breasts all the way to her hips.

A loud huff of air left her as he spread the cheeks of her ass, baring the pink pout of her pucker. Another huff, accompanied by a startled stiffening when he kissed her right there, feeling the ridges and different textures. He sniffed deeply, loudly, wanting to know every smell and taste of her. When he tongued her, she relaxed and pushed her ass closer.

Her long, soft sighs became grunts when his fingers pushed in her cunt. She was soaked. Warm. He flattened his tongue on her pucker as his fingers slid deep in her slit. Her breathing sharpened, blooming into a moan from the dual pleasures on her orifices.

It surprised him no more to be hard again and burning so much for her. He knelt, gripping her hips to keep her spread.

His heart was racing—from excitement at being compelled to do something he’d never done before and also because it would be with her. He saw the crimson tint of the fire, their shadows, her hair and the freckles covering her back. There was nothing he could look at for more than a few breaths but he’d never been so sure. This sure.

Carefully, he spat a generous glob of saliva on her pucker. He savored the sight of it on the secret pink of her, how it mingled with the trickle of hairs before finding his voice.

“Brienne, yes?”

She groaned. “Yes.”

He spat again, this time on his cock. Rubbed the dripping plump head on the ridged pout. “Yes?”

“Gods, Jaime.” She gripped the mattress, gouging new holes and letting straw peek from them. She thrust toward him. “Yes. _Yes._ ”

Brienne buried her wail in the mattress as Jaime pushed inside, her tight, scorching heat drawing a sharp cry from him. They panted for what felt like several minutes, both feeling her resistance ebb away and pull him deeper. This tentative invitation was all he needed to take hold of her hips and bury himself all the way.

“Jaime.” His name was a broken, needy sound. _“Jaime.”_

He heard another tearing sound, loud rustles as their bodies moved on the bed. Pulling halfway out, he pulled up her hips. Then he was back inside, burned once again by her heat that made him feel so alive. She kept calling his name, her voice sometimes plaintive, sometimes searching. He said hers just as many times, matching the frantic pace of his heartbeat.

They came to their release at the same time, wordless sounds of relief and triumph leaving them. Together they fell on the bed, him still buried in her. She whimpered.

“Oh.” Reluctantly, he pulled out. Her pucker was the darker pink of a rose and stains striped her thighs and the bed. As she caught her breath, he forced himself up and out of bed, heading for the basin. Sleepy blue eyes watched him over a freckled shoulder as he wiped her and the bed clean before turning the washcloth over to rub on his cock.

He tossed the cloth on the table then picked up a cloak off the floor—hers, it turned out—and returned to bed. He drew it over them, their bodies instinctively curving to cocoon in its warmth. Under the fur, he played with her nipple.

“Are you hungry? I found us some bread and fish.”

“Maybe later. But if you’re hungry, you can go ahead.”

He smiled against her hair as she held his hand to her breast. “Maybe later.”

“Do you think—” and he felt her cooled body warm—“Jaime, do you think they heard us?”

He knew what she meant. Holding her closer, he asked, “If they did, would that be a problem?”

“I-I-I’m not sure. I don’t really know.”

“For you? Would you be troubled if you knew they’d heard?” Feeling her blush anew, he kissed her behind the ear. “Kings, queens, lords and ladies have fucked people besides their spouses, Brienne. _You_ are Tarth. If you want cocks in you all day, it’s your right.”

“But you’re with the queen,” she whispered.

He nuzzled her. “I’m yours.”

She held him tighter.

“Brienne. Ask me.”

She stilled. They knew what he meant.

“Ask me.”

“Jaime—”

_“Ask me.”_

“No,” she turned to him, tears in her eyes. “No. I can’t. Please.”

He caught her seeking hand. “Why not?”

“Because I know you’ll stay.”

He pulled her in his arms and she sobbed. Tears fell from his eyes too.

The inevitability of their separation, rather than sending them on opposite sides of the small bed drew them closer. He hardly left her mouth and she never closed her legs, both fighting off sleep to be with each other in the little time left.

He watched her get dressed in the morning, memorizing the trickle of freckles on her elbow, the slight upturn tilt of her big nose, the flex of her feet and the clump of hairs on her cunt stiffened by his seed and the latter wet and gleaming from her inner thighs. He gazed at her face the longest before it was momentarily hidden by the tunic sliding down her face then past her chin. Her face with its thick, coarse features was the dearest to him.

They ate their meager meal of stale bread and chewy salted fish without word to each other but with more stares of longing and tenderness shared. He insisted on fastening her cloak, needing still to be part of her despite the mundane task.

“Blue is a good color on you,” he said while working on the clasp. He looked in her eyes. “It goes well with your eyes.”

She blushed and looked at her boots. He straightened the cloak around her, wanting it to fall just right. “Do you remember the first time I fucked you?”

“I don’t think I can ever forget, Jaime.” Her attempt at mirth made him smile. He chuckled and leaned in. She gently put her forehead on his. Her hands rested on his shoulders.

“After you rode me, you wrapped yourself in your old blue cloak. You came back to bed wearing nothing else. We slept under its warmth.”

She nodded. “I remember being quite happy. And then. . .then morning came.”

He hugged her around the waist at the same time she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Nuzzling her neck, he whispered, “It’s all in the past. We’re together now. I’m yours.” Touching her on the cheek, he looked up at her. “No matter what, Brienne. Whatever else lies between us, I’m yours.”

“As am I.” She whispered back.

“I dream of you in blue and nothing else.”

They kissed, all too briefly. Then she turned to put the sword belt around him. She stroked the round hilt of his Valyrian blade while looking in his eyes.

“You are the lion of your House, Jaime. You will never be second to anyone, not even the queen.”

They joined the crowd that had gathered before the dead. Women and children on eternal sleep, cleaned and shrouded. Returned to the ground that had killed them. The roar of the winds and the ocean rendered the septon’s prayer to the Stranger a whisper. The only things he felt were Brienne’s hand and a stray wisp of her hair tickling his cheek. All he heard was her breath. A sideways look showed her wretchedness over what had happened.

He longed to embrace her. Kiss her. Any other leader would be stoic. Hold emotions at bay. Never her. She wore her sadness for all to see and despite so much loss, the people knew they were not alone.

Instead of leaving right away as soon as earth covered the bodies once more, Brienne, Orlyn and Goodwin, as well as her handmaidens and soldiers stayed. Jaime kept his men around too. He watched her make sure that everyone, the children especially, had a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread. Invited those who have lost their houses that Evenfall was open until they got back on their feet.

“Milord?”

Jaime turned and saw a man with his faded cap held to his chest. He had the build and posture of a younger man though his hollowed cheeks made him older. He wore a coat too large for him, and cleaner than the rest of his clothes. The dirt clinging to his fingernails told he must have clawed his way out of the earth before found and pulled out.

He bowed once Jaime’s attention was on him. Jaime shook his head. “There’s no need for that.”

“I just thought to say. . .” The man clutched his cap even more. “The queen. After the war.”

Jaime braced himself, knowing what was coming.

“She had my brother and father executed. I swore to the Seven my soul for the bloodiest reckoning on your House. It has not changed. I will wait no matter how long it takes.”

“You are a free man,” he managed to say.

“But I wish to thank you.” He looked around. “The Seven would implore me to be a better man and forgive but I had already lost so much. I cannot be better, not that I’ve ever tried. Since that black day I didn’t see the point of even trying. But I saw how much you fought to keep my wife alive after the earth fell on us. You would not remember,” he added quickly, seeing Jaime look troubled. “There were so many you fought to keep alive. You have paid a debt, milord, but your House is not done. Not with me.” He looked around. “Never for the wives and mothers from which the queen had taken husbands and sons.” He turned back to Jaime. “Never for brothers.”

The man then offered his hand. Jaime looked at it and removed his glove. It was the roughest hand he’d touched, and still gritty with dirt.

“I shall wait,” Jaime whispered.

“May this day spare you of it. But your death will be celebrated rather than mourned.”

The man bowed this time and Jaime inclined his head as well.

The ride back to Evenfall Hall was slow and arduous, given the volume of their host. Brienne had barely dismounted when the household left behind was upon her. Orlyn and Goodwin were off to see to the tasks they’ve left behind as soon as their boots touched the ground.

Jaime ordered his soldiers to get cleaned up and rest. He had no plan to have them do much. Garrett and Peck were off before he could give them any order. The walk to his room was more arduous than the hill he had climbed with Brienne. That seemed like another lifetime ago. Worse, a dream.

But in the chamber of the Moonmaid he found comfort. Garrett and Peck had clearly gone to work quickly. Crackling fire warmed the place. A basin of water should he opt for a quick clean. A tub clouded with steam if he wanted a more thorough cleaning. On a dining table was a covered silver dish though he still smelled the aroma of spices. He chose to eat first despite his morning meal.

He finished the oysters and onions in gravy quickly and wiped the dish clean with the soft bread that came with a firm crust. Then he washed his face with water from the basin. As he straightened up, he caught his reflection in the looking glass.

The man staring back at him was barely recognizable. His hair had not only grown past his shoulders but was dark from dirt. Not one strand of gold could be seen. The fur on his face was much thicker too.

There was nothing of the Jaime Lannister he knew in the glass. _Maybe just the eyes._ Shining like emeralds despite having very little sleep. The corners still tilting slightly up but they were hardly cat-like in shape. Those lines had begun to droop. _Cersei wouldn’t recognize him now._

He removed his cloak, coat, tunic. These he left on the floor. The sword belt he unbuckled with care, putting it on a bench. The eyes from the hilt gleamed gold from the fire.

After a bath and short period of rest, Jaime got dressed and went out. A Lannister guard was once again stationed at the door. Seeing the man with his crimson and gold armor banished whatever rest and peace of mind he’d gained from an afternoon in his chamber. He was reminded of court and its endless intrigues, the games he was forced to play.

That wherever he went, there was no escaping Cersei. She was gone from his heart longer than he’d realized but there was no erasing what they had. Who she had been. What she was.

Life slowly resumed in Evenfall Hall. Given the hardship of the previous days, nearly everyone had gone off for more rest, more food. Brienne he could not find anywhere so he assumed she too was resting or oversaw some of the duties and responsibilities she’d had to abandon in order to help in the rescue effort.

He managed to find some calm staring up at the painting of Brienne’s mother. Her round stomach told of pregnancy and he wondered if this was the last portrait of her before dying on the birthing bed. Brienne had nothing of her—her mother was delicate and small-boned and quite lovely. It was hard deciding whether her eyes were blue or violet.

Quiet, barely discernible steps reached his ears. He turned and saw Orlyn pause, looking amused. “I should’ve known better than to sneak up on a lion.”

“It’s so quiet here I think you could even hear a pin drop.” Jaime rejoined, nodding as the man bowed. “Perchance, would you know the whereabouts of the Lady Brienne? I hope to consult with her.”

“I just saw her in the library. She should still be there with Ser Goodwin.” Orlyn held up a raven scroll with a little wax of a lion’s head. It was open. “From King’s Landing, my lord. You would understand why we had to see its contents.”

Jaime stared at it, feeling a chill within. He took it.

“I see she’s captivated you,” Orlyn remarked, gazing at the painting. “Lady Caethryn broke quite a number of hearts before her marriage to Lord Selwyn.”

“What were the color of her eyes? I can’t decide if they’re blue or violet.”

“Violet, my lord.”

Jaime looked at him. “Truly?” He looked back at the painting. “I thought it just a rumor.”

“When there’s a lot of you, it’s a challenge fighting for prominence, let alone being remembered. There are many ways to achieve the latter. Being the first to unite all the seven kingdoms is one. Madness another, a route that has become quite synonymous to their name. Forsaking duty and family for love.” Orlyn seemed lost in the past for a moment when he spoke. “I was the second to hold her.”

“Her?”

“The Lady Brienne, my lord. I was the second to hold her after she was born. The midwife caught her and was supposed to hand her to her mother, beautiful, generous soul that she was. Caethryn wasn’t always weak, you see. But childbirth took a lot of her strength. She lost a lot of blood giving birth to Galladon and then to Brienne. So she couldn’t take Brienne from my arms right away. She had to rest. I stood vigil at her bed until she woke two days later. The only time Brienne was away from my arms was when the wet nurse had to feed her.”

Orlyn smiled but it was touched with sadness. “My calling required all my life, ser. There was no room to be a husband, a father. Brienne made me think of what that life could have been. I have no regrets with my choice. But I had loved her from the moment she was born. Tried to be a father when Selwyn couldn’t detach himself long enough from his mistresses to see her, tried to give her comfort when that cruel septa sliced her heart with words. I treated every cut and wound she collected learning the sword. Set her broken nose as straight as my skills allowed. I healed her pain. I tried to protect her when she married that shit excuse of a man but he threatened my life. I had no choice.” Shame had him lowering his head. “I knew how to heal cuts. To stop the bleeding. I knew not how to make them.”

The long chains he wore around his neck rattled as he held them up to show him. “These chains, ser,” he said. “They tell you of the skills and knowledge I have. I can heal cuts, relieve discomfort, cure sickness. If I must, even concoct poisons to give the most hellish pain. But one pain in which I have no knowledge in healing is a shattered heart. I only have to look at you to know what you feel for her is true. But let’s not forget,” he glanced at the scroll in his hand. “You have broken oaths before. Oaths you’ve made before the Seven and your king. You are also the queen’s brother and husband.”

He bowed. “My lord.”

He left without waiting any sign of dismissal by Jaime. Left in the quiet following the maester’s footsteps and the eyes of Tarths long dead staring at him, Jaime stared at the scroll in his hand then opened it.

_Prepare the Westerlands for fire and blood. Houses that refuse shall have rains._

The letter was crumpled in his hand when he was at the door of the library. He knocked and the door was quick to open. It was Goodwin. The old knight didn’t look too happy. “Ser Jaime,” he acknowledged.

He stepped aside for Jaime to enter. “My lady, do you have further need of me?” Goodwin asked Brienne.

“We’re done. Thank you.”

The door closed behind him. Jaime and Brienne looked at each other. Then he held up the scroll. She looked away.

He went to the fire and threw it there. Didn’t even look to see the flames consume it. Now she was staring at him.

“Ask me again,” he whispered.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Please. I can’t.”

Steadfast as her refusal was, she went to him and he met her with a kiss. Needy and heated, it didn’t take long for breeches to drop to their boots. Bent over the long table, Brienne grunted his name over and over as he fucked her from behind. Their release was a white-hot rush taking them away from the distress of their impending separation. Jaime continued to clutch her by breasts and cunt, refusing to let go despite her stuttered breathing from his tight hold. Brienne turned her head to the side, seeking his lips. As they kissed, her tears slipped between their lips.

“When?” Brienne asked quietly a while later.

They were behind some shelves and surrounded by discarded clothes. Brienne straddled him, soft and flushed from their most recent round of fucking. Jaime was still half-hard and inside her.

Instead of answering, he pulled her close until his lips wrapped around her nipple. She sighed and hugged him back, kissing the top of his head.

He wished for her taste to never leave his tongue. Wished for her scent to sink in the recesses of his soul so she was always with him. Wished to be able to hear for always her sweet sigh and whimper as he tongued her nipple until it stiffened and peaked.

“Jaime.” She clung as he urged her to the floor. He was getting hard again and feeling and hearing her cunt stretch around him just about rivaled the music of her grunts. She spread her arms, gripping the edges of the shelves flanking them as he fucked her gently. He cupped one of her breasts, thumbing the nipple. His head dropped to hers as his hips swung in and out of the cradle of her thighs. To drown in her eyes. To never forget the blueness of her eyes when she loved him like this.

“As soon as the winds still enough and the water calms long enough,” he said while helping her get dressed after a longer while. He was at her feet, ready to pull up her breeches. He had insisted.

His eyes traveled up her body, resting the longest on her face before turning away to press his nose on her cunt. Her hairs were sodden clumps and when his tongue flicked past her slit she still tasted of him. Hearing her sob, he hugged her around the hips. Kept his cheek pressed on her cunt.

“I don’t want you to go,” she confessed, stroking his hair. He leaned into her touch. “But you can’t stay. Please don’t ask me again, Jaime. For both our sakes.”

He nodded and kissed her gently on the cunt. Then he pulled up her breeches, securing the ties then buckling her belt. He kissed her stomach through her clothes, her beasts, rubbed his lips on the small patch of skin bared between collar and chin before taking her mouth. She cupped his face, her kisses urging him to open some more. There was no more hesitation or even shyness in her kisses. Only want. Love.

Jaime was shaking when the kiss ended. They continued holding each other. He just let himself feel the gentleness of her fingers fluttering around his jawline, her palm sliding across his shoulder, down his chest then back to his face. “How can you expect me to walk away from you?”

Then he cupped her through the breeches, pleased at the familiar squishing sound. Her eyes burned bright while her cheeks turned crimson. “From _this_?” 

She answered with another kiss. He kissed her back deeply, desperate to leave, imprint part of himself in her so she won’t forget him. _This._ Then he dropped his head on her shoulder. She continued to hold him, caress him. He sighed from the touch of her fingers through his hair, gentler than anything he’d ever felt. Her hands on his back made him purr.

“Jaime, even in good weather sailing all the way to the Westerlands takes so long. It might take you close to a moon or even more because of winter. Why couldn’t she just send someone else? Or a raven? Your House holds that region. You’re not the only Lannister she trusts?”

He couldn’t help but smile. “There’s the Casterly Rock Lannisters and the Lannisters of Lannisport. Or rather the ‘lesser Lannisters’ as they’re called. Those are numerous. We’re not.” Then he added, “Uncle Kevan has all but disowned us for our marriage.”

Her touch faltered but she didn’t push him away. “That’s why she thinks to send me. A raven from Cersei he can ignore. But if I were to turn up, he can’t send me away. After all, by leaving the Kingsguard my rights as Tywin’s heir were restored. Kevan is just a glorified groundskeeper of Casterly Rock. To turn me away is to disrespect the queen. He won’t do something as foolish when forced to confront me.”

“You don’t have enough men with you.” She said after he reluctantly left her arms. She really looked worried.

“I have my own allies there.” Jaime hoped Addam could still be trusted. He had no choice. He kissed her for reassurance and his own strength. “Kevan will just have to set aside his disgust for me. Daenerys is a growing threat. I admit Cersei’s quite late in realizing it but we might have time to prepare. It’s all we can hope for.” He put his hands on her waist. “Are you sure, absolutely sure you can trust everyone in your household?”

Brienne frowned. “Yes. I have no reason to doubt anyone under this roof, Jaime. Do you have a spy in yours?”

“Someone was accused but I’ve never believed it.” Thinking of Ilda was to think of Cersei and everything she had done with monsters at her side. Doing anything for his sister should be the last thing he should do but he was also her husband. “I don’t support her hateful moves against foreigners in King’s Landing but a part of me, I hate to admit, does see the rationale for it. I don’t approve,” he repeated at the look of displeasure on Brienne’s face. “But if there are spies there should be proof. There must be a trial.”

“But she’s never had proof. Else she would have sent word throughout the Seven Kingdoms. All she’s written you is a command to prepare for Daenerys. And by the looks of it, bad weather as well.”

Jaime shook his head. “She doesn’t speak of rain as in a storm. She wishes to be like Tywin.” When Brienne still looked confused, he said, “The Rains of Castamere.”

Immediately, she looked ill. Jaime didn’t feel too good as well. It had been many summers ago but he still remembered the maggots and flies feasting on the dead bodies of some unnamed Reynes chosen to hang at the gates of Lion’s Mouth. Seeing the flesh rot off their bones under the hot sun had given him nightmares as a young boy. Despite closed windows and the thickest drapes, the stench of death filled all of Casterly Rock.

“Her hold on the continent is precarious—”

“I know—”

“She can’t issue commands and make threats in one breath. You don’t make people follow and believe in you by threatening to cut them off at the knees, Jaime.”

“I know.”

“Even I know not all of the Westerlands are behind her. And in the north it’s only the Boltons that support her but they still hold the region.” She held his hand. “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

It was the closest she would come to asking him. He cupped her cheek. “You know I should.”

She looked close to tears again but nodded. “But doesn’t she realize the danger her command puts you in?”

“Even more dangerous to get out of it. Brienne, think of an upside to this. I can see your son.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, stilling. It seemed she had stopped breathing. “Yes, you do.”

“Anything you wish to send him, a letter, a sword, horse, I shall bring it to him personally.”

“I want him back.” She admitted, shaking her head. “Which we both know you can’t do.”

He thought it odd she was far from placated, let alone distracted. She paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, muttering to herself.

“The impossibility of her command. Her threats. How can anyone do what she demands.”

“You have time.” He said, drawing her eyes to him. “Time enough until Cersei sends someone to see your progress with the ships. But that is all I can give.”

He was afraid too, for her, of another vow he might break. Cersei’s wrath should concern him but he gave it little thought.

Unlike vows he had broken before, the one he most feared now would not just be the end of him but Brienne as well. He went to her, taking her hands again as he stared up her eyes. “I swear by the old gods and the new, Brienne. If need be I shall give my life to save you and Lyonel. All of Westeros. . .against the tyrant I married.”

There. At last he’d spoken it. If there were eyes and ears behind the walls, he’d just signed his death warrant. Brienne thought so too because all color drained from her face. But Jaime did not regret his words. 

There was no more left to say for now so they parted ways—but not without another hard, lingering kiss and roughly fondling each other. He was half-hard staggering out of the library.

For the rest of the day, he put his men to work. Garrett and Peck began to pack and the guards he sent off to gather what supplies they could. Jaime rode with a few men to the docks to check on the repairs Warrick and the crew were doing to the ship—they had been replacing rotting wood, sewing up sails and such from the moment they’d dropped anchor. Warrick thought to tell him about a cat and her litter of kittens that had sought shelter in the ship during the thunderstorms.

“The babies have their mama but she would be another mouth, milord. Worry not because she will have a buffet of rats to herself,” Warrick assured him.

“If she can take them all, at least disease is one less thing to worry about,” Jaime said with a shrug. “Do you think we can leave within the week?”

Warrick looked at the sky. “The day after tomorrow, milord. I’m almost sure.”

Jaime smirked. “Be surer before that.”

The hours passed quickly because of work so Jaime was surprised to find his squires preparing his supper and bed clothes on his return. He thanked then dismissed them.

His meal was simpler fare this time—fish pie and mushrooms and other vegetables cooked in wine and butter. Crisp wine came with the food.

As the hour of Brienne’s arrival neared, he found himself suddenly anxious, even worried. What if because he was leaving soon she would visit him no more? It made sense, he thought, stacking his head on his hands. It made things easier. Better they get used without each other now.

He didn’t want that. And he was sure neither did she.

He shot to his feet, ready to storm her chamber in full view of his Lannister guard and her own guard when there, right behind the double doors of the armoire, came the light, shy tap of her knocking.

He opened the doors, blinking at the vision of here huddled in a hooded blue cloak trimmed with fur. It matched the vivid blueness of her eyes.

She clutched the cloak around her instead of just letting it hang down the sides of her body and swirl with her every movement. The passageway must be colder tonight, Jaime surmised as she stumbled past him. There was much wood to burn so his chambers were almost as war as summer. The effect on Brienne was immediate—a blush the color of cherries swept all over her face, pale lips became soft pink. When she finally met his gaze, she managed a small, shy smile.

“I’ve dreamed of you,” he whispered, touching the cloak. “Just like this.”

The deepening blush of her cheeks caused a twitch under his robe. “Come wench,” he coaxed, grinning. “Won’t you let that cloak go and let me see you?”

“May I stay the night?”

He was about to tease her again, how of course she could since this was her castle after all. But her big eyes and the absence of any visible puff of air leaving her lips told this was a question she had given serious thought to.

“I-I dream of waking up next to you,” she whispered.

As soon as she spoke the words, she exhaled and loosened her iron grip on the cloak. It parted, revealing that Brienne wore only a pair of boots underneath.

Jaime gulped. In the firelight she was almost beautiful, and the flare of her hips seemed more womanly, her breasts fuller. She went to him, stomping like a soldier rather than flitting with a soft sway of her hips. With a hand on his chest, she pushed him down the bed until he was sitting. She climbed up easily, her heavy thighs crushing his lap, the hairs of her cunt a rough, hushed sound on his robe. He squeezed her breasts while looking in her eyes then hugged her around the waist.

“I dream of you,” he said.

He spent the night mostly inside her, wrapped in the blue of her eyes and the cloak. Her grunts and moans drowned out the crashing sounds of the ocean and the winds howling outside the windows. He gave himself up to their kisses, lost himself in the strength and softness of her.

Every end of a bout of fucking reminded of his departure. Over and over they sought each other across the bed, fighting off the exhaustion and sleep intent on claiming their bodies with breathless kisses and desperate, rousing touches.

His body felt the arrival of dawn despite the world remaining dark and somber outside the windows. He lay in her arms wide awake, listening to her quiet, steady breathing against his nape. Her wide frame and thick arms and thighs made her the perfect blanket. Now and then a soft grunt or murmur laced her breathing, but it never bloomed into any coherent word. He held her hand tighter to his chest, wishing so much to take her sounds and the feel of her against him like this.

But it was her face he wished to bring with him most of all. Carefully he turned until they faced each other. Would his memory ever be clear enough to remember how her freckles were spread on her face, the straight, thick line of her eyebrows and the thin fan of blond eyelashes? Would he remember how the tip of her nose tilted slightly to the side? Or the pink of her lips—not quite the pink of a rose, or the very edge of a sky at sunset. He knew the color pink but there was nothing like it in this world.

As he nuzzled the freckles on her shoulder, his eyes met the glowing ruby stare of the lion at his sword’s hilt.

The realization hit like a thousand bricks falling on his head. With a heavy sigh, he left her embrace as if in pain. He picked up her cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders, shivering and grunting as he looked for paper and quill, a bottle of ink. A desk drawer yielded them and, with as steady a hand that could only be possible in this cold, he wrote quickly. The ink was barely dry as he opened the door to his chamber and found his guard leaning against the wall. The latter gasped upon hearing the door open and shuffled to straighten up.

Jaime waited until the guard was mostly awake before handing him the letters. “Get these to Ser Goodwin and Maester Orlyn at once.”

“Milord?” The guard squinted at him, struggling not to yawn. “At once?”

“No, later at your soonest convenience,” he snapped. “What the fuck do you think I mean? Go!”

The guard nodded frantically, knowing it wasn’t wise to piss off a lion so early in the morning. He bowed and rushed down the hallway.

Jaime shook his head and shut the door.

*******  
Hours later, as Peck helped Jaime with his armor, Garrett arrived with a note. Jaime halted the process of the second pauldron being strapped around him to read it.

“It’s from the docks, my lord,” Garrett said. “From Captain Warrick.”

Jaime nodded, dreading to see what the man had written. And indeed it was the worst news: _Lord Lannister, the ship is ready to sail at first light on the morrow. I await your further orders._

The two boys looked at him expectantly as he stared at the fire, the paper flat on his hand. Then he closed his eyes and gave the order. “Garrett, begin arrangements for a carriage to bring our trunks to the ship today.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.” After a quick bow, the boy hurried to do as ordered. Jaime turned to Peck and nodded, indicating to finish with his armor.

The last to be put on Jaime was his cloak, the rich crimson of his House. Peck stood aside and Jaime checked himself in the looking glass. The armor Cersei had made for him was more ceremonial than battle-appropriate. Beautiful to look at with its vibrant crimson and gold color, the lion details on the pauldrons and vambrace. The rubies on the breastplate called for a warm hammer or ax to take the fucking jewels.

He turned away and took two swords, looping the belt below their respective hilts to secure them.

“Is everything ready as I’ve required?” He asked Peck.

“Yes, my lord. Maester Orlyn and Ser Goodwin await in the great hall, as well as others.”

“Good.”

Peck kept a few paces behind Jaime during their walk to the great hall. Jaime felt as charged and heady as if about to fight in a great, defining battle. The kind that would have songs sung even hundred of years from now.

But there was no battle, he thought, stepping past the double doors of the hall. There will be no bloodshed, not here.

He walked past an audience consisting of the small Lannister forces brought him on this journey and guards and soldiers of Evenfall Hall. Standing one step below the raised platform were Orlyn and Goodwin. Orlyn was still in his usual maester’s robes and chains but Goodwin had donned his armor, a rich dark blue with the quartered suns and crescents of House Tarth designed on the breastplate.

“May this only be the first of your inspired ideas,” Goodwin remarked as Jaime stepped up the platform.

“That would mean living longer than the realm wishes for me,” he responded. “Are you one of them or the exception, ser?”

“Bring forth another and we shall see.”

“I’m surprised you’ve not thought of doing the same. You know her best.”

“The people closest to you sometimes do not know you best. I’ve definitely made this error.”

Jaime smirked and looked towards the doors.

And at that precise moment, Brienne arrived.

In her fur-trimmed cloak and armor of crescents and suns, she was every inch of a battle commander. Tall. Huge. Strong. A warrior from the braid slung over her broad shoulder to the tips of her boots. No wars would be fought over her beauty. But she was someone you’d follow into battle. She was someone to have at your side when facing the Stranger.

A warrior you would follow. Someone you’d want on your side when facing the Stranger. As she walked towards the platform, her shining eyes snared Jaime’s. They stole his breath.

He wanted more than anything else to end the short distance between them with a touch to her cheek. Touch her everywhere and never let go. She stared back at him, the longing in her eyes clear.

If she said it. . .one word. . .Jaime held her gaze. _One word from her and he will not go._

As if reading his thoughts, she gave a quick, barely discernible shake of her head. But he saw. As well as the brighter shine of her eyes. Her hand started moving towards him, as if to take his hand too but she suddenly dropped it. Crimson flooded her cheeks. He smiled.

“Brienne of House Tarth,” he said. “Kneel.”

Brienne got down on one knee. Jaime whipped out his sword. Gripping the hilt firmly, he raised it, dubbed her first on the right shoulder then the left as he spoke:

“In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid—”

Nearly overcome by love for her, he forgot what to say next for a moment. And for probably the thousandth time, in his moment of need, her eyes told him what he should say next.

“—I charge you to protect all women.” The silver of the blade was a dull shine next to her gaze. How could she look at him with so much love? After everything he’d done for love, for _Cersei_ , how did he deserve grace such as this? Her?

“Arise, Ser Brienne of House Tarth, a knight of the seven kingdoms.”

And so she stood up, gripping the hilt of her sword. The raised platform put him at eye level with her. Her eyes shimmered from tears she tried not to shed. Her chin wobbled from the effort.

Now. It seemed a thousand voices within him was shouting. _Now._ He raised a hand to grasp her by the arm when Goodwin smoothly cut between them, snatching Brienne’s hand for a vigorous shake.

“At last,” he said, his enthusiastic nods nearly hitting Jaime square in the nose. As Jaime stepped away from the platform, he continued, “Ser. As it should be.”

“My thanks,” Brienne told him.

Jaime moved away and headed for his men. “Have our horses and carriage ready,” he instructed. “It will not be long before we leave.”

They bowed and went to do his bidding. Alone, he glanced at the other sword on his hip, stroking the lion’s head. While thinking whether to leave it with Orlyn or Goodwin to hand over to Brienne after he’d left, he felt someone standing behind him. A quick turn and he smiled.

He looked at her from head to toe. Memorizing. Wanting her. Loving her even more.

“As one knight to another,” she said softly, “don’t I deserve a goodbye?”

“I thought to make it easier,” he confessed.

“Nothing will be easy for us, Ser Jaime.”

“On the contrary,” he rejoined. “Looking at you is a gift.”

She went to him, her tall, cloaked form immediately blocking the rest of the crowd and the hall from his sight. It was a fact that didn’t escape her as well for she grasped his hand. Quickly, she turned it and pressed a firm kiss on his gloved palm.

“Must you leave right away?”

“I have time.” He grasped her hand. “Will you join me in the library?”

Out in the hallway, they walked next to each other, arms hanging loosely on the sides. Jaime opened the door and Brienne went in.

Instead of unleashing a storm of kisses on each other, they just held hands. Emeralds looked into sapphires.

“I have a gift,” He said, reluctantly letting go to pull out the sword from its scabbard. Brienne’s eyes were riveted by the black and crimson ripples of the blade. Cradling it in his hands, he held it out to her.

She shook her head. “I can not accept—”

“A man of honor owned this once. It should pass only to someone with the same inclination. Mine is not that hand, Brienne.”

“No, Jaime. You are—”

“When Catelyn released me, she had me swear to never raise a hand against a Tully and to protect and return her daughters to Winterfell alive. Too much time has passed since. To raise a hand against a Tully now is no different from striking a cripple for the fun of it. Sansa Stark is dead,” he declared. “As is the younger girl. This sword should have protected them but not only did I receive it too late but with who I’ve become. . .who I’m with. . .” The truth was now bitter. Cersei’s name a chokehold. “Had I been a different man I would see those vows fulfilled. I would aim for honor once again. It’s lost for the likes of me. But not you. Honor is the rock your heart rests on, Brienne. I don’t ask you to go on a futile search for the Stark girls. Only that you be the hand to wield this. Take it.”

Brienne hesitated then took it. She stared at it with a mix of awe and uncertainty. She glanced at Jaime. “It feels good.” She sounded surprised.

“There was a time I’d give my right hand for a blade like this. The sword is not for the likes of me.”

“What makes you think it’s for someone like me?”

“Who else?” Was all he could say. “There is one thing I must ask of you. With regards to the sword.”

“Anything.”

This time he hesitated but spoke anyway. “It would please me if you call it Oathkeeper. Honor is lost on me, Brienne. But not you. You will protect your people with it.”

“You have my word.” She murmured, captivated by the sword once again. “Oathkeeper it shall be. And I will protect all who can not fight for themselves.” Blond eyelashes fluttered as she blushed. “For you.”

Then she looked at him, revealing that familiar shimmer in her eyes. Jaime felt the prick behind his eyeballs that brought the same shimmer too.

“Goodbye. Ser Brienne.”

She nodded. “Ser Jaime.”

He raised a hand to her cheek, needing this final touch. The hope in her eyes called for it too. But just before he could brush her face, he shook his head. Dropped the hand. He stared at the ground to avoid the devastation in her face. He wouldn’t be able to bear it if he saw. Wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

“It’s better that I. . that we don’t. . .”

“Yes. I-I agree.” 

He looked up. She too was staring at the ground.

Then he made the decision. Grabbed her by the nape and pressed his nose to her neck. Listened to her gasp and sop, felt the sharp rise of her chest, the warmth of her face. Breathed in her scent of steel and sea.

Before losing what little resolve he had left, he let her go just as suddenly, turning on his heel. His cloak swirled about him, and he took one step then two, another, and more until he was at door. Still the temptation to turn and look was great. He grasped the door handle and pulled.

He stormed out of the library, hard emerald eyes staring straight ahead. The thunder of his footsteps echoed the heavy thudding of his heart that began to hurt the farther he took himself away.

Away from her.

After walking for what felt like leagues, guards of Evenfall Hall were finally pushing the heavy doors for him. He shut his eyes from the dark gray sunlight, breathed in the ice and salt of the open air. Then he stepped out.

As the doors were pulled closed, he turned and there she was. Looking every inch the knight she was meant to be.

Magnificent. Formidable. And now wielding the sword of justice. As it should be, he thought, turning away and climbing up his horse. He pulled at the reins, looked at the doors again before turning his horse towards the gate. _As it only should be._


	14. Brienne V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I tell myself sometimes it’s better he’s far from all the trials that deluge us but I’m still his mother. He’s safest with me. Only I can guarantee his protection. Only I can do more than keep his head above the water. And now. . .now. . .I don’t know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here! If you're still interested, thank you!
> 
> If this is your first time, enjoy!

“Stormclouds in the far horizon suggest that Estermont would have heavy rainfall for a couple of days, with the possibility of thunderstorms, milady. The waters on our side of the island are mostly still. Few fishermen have ventured out in their vessels for chance of a catch. A few cargo ships from Dorne and Essos have taken advantage of the calm seas and winds to sail for our docks. As it has been for weeks, there are no sightings of ships with black sails with a red three-headed dragon.”

“Keep watch over another possible storm in Estermont,” Brienne said. “Pray we are spared of it too, as well as further rain.” Estermont’s continued silence was alarming but she couldn’t allow herself to think the worst. Tarth was still struggling to get back to its feet. Estermont was likely doing the same.

An emissary would have to be sent as soon as weather permitted. It would be a day’s journey on ship, with the wind. “Trading ships headed our way is good news and an opportunity to restock our stores,” she continued, hoping her tone didn’t betray her uncertainty. “As for the absence of those ships with black sails. . .”

“Yes, milady?”

“We need to have all four watchtowers guarded for the following nights. Best to keep watch in all directions. Ser Goodwin? Do you agree?”

“Men will be dispatched in them on each shift, my lady.” He responded. “Two, at each, with your permission. The cold helps little in keeping one awake. A slap is an effective reminder of one’s duties.”

“Very well, two in each then. That will be all,” Brienne said, turning back to the watchman. “Thank you. That will be all.”

Once the doors of the library closed behind him, she turned to Goodwin and Orlyn, the two men she trusted most in the world. “I don’t trust it.”

Goodwin frowned. “The guard?”

“No. The absence of her ships in our waters. She has been watching us for several moons. Biding her time. Why would she suddenly be absent?” 

“The recent storm perhaps kept her away, my lady,” Orlyn spoke. “Which tells us something important. Her ships’ captains are experienced. It shouldn’t surprise us much, since she also has sellswords. A good number of them had to have worked in ships enough to read the sky and know the water.”

Nothing to like about the absence at all. “How goes the training of our soldiers?”

“Improving. . .steadily.” Goodwin seemed to hesitate before continuing. “Strong and dedicated fighters, to be clear. Whether they would be ready for actual combat, I can’t say. Given that the queen has only recently granted us the right to handle arms means new training for them again. I wish I had better to report, my lady.”

“No soldier is ever ready until thrown in the battlefield. Get to work then.” Her tone was quiet but sure with command.

“They will be the fighters you wish, my lady. You have my word.” Goodwin bowed and she dismissed him.

Once alone with Orlyn, she turned to the old maester.

“Any word from the others? About anything?”

Orlyn handed her several raven scrolls. “Blackhaven has a new lord, my lady. One named Symeon Colchester. He claims to be descended from the first Vulture King.”

“Does he. If it makes him sound more heroic and more deserving of the seat, he’s welcome to spin tales about it.” Brienne didn’t like this development at all. There was little to trust in someone who had taken leadership through violence.

The direction of her thoughts called Jaime to mind. She clasped her hands tightly under the table.

Jaime had been gone for four days but her heart still hurt. Each day of his absence opened the wound some more. She almost wished he had been nothing more than a dream. Madness would be easier, perhaps, instead of smelling him on the furs she’d stolen from the chamber of the Moonmaid. Huddled under those, she remembered his embrace, the fire of his kisses.

It was also a reminder that she was painfully alone.

The first night he had gone, she had tossed and turned. By the time her handmaidens came to rouse her she had a wicked headache. The next night was the same—and only then did she realize that the restlessness came from her mind and body still stamped with the new practice of eluding sleep.

Nights with Jaime were hardly for sleep. From the moment she was in his bed, her legs never closed. Exhaustion claimed them rather willfully going to sleep. Recovering just a little from their latest bout was enough to reach for the other and do it again.

It had embarrassed her at first, her appetite for his flesh. She woke him with gentle licks and kisses from head to toe, culminating in needy embrace of her mouth around his cock. Through touch and grunts, she coaxed him to fuck her throat, to leave his seed in her she could taste him throughout the day. Sometimes, too exhausted but still wanting him so much, she could only caress his chest, his arms. He watched her as if each stroke was a gift.

He was most beautiful when soft from release, giving her a glimpse of the younger man he had before Aerys.

Daylight should make living with his absence easier. It was crueler. All too clearly she remembered how the dark gray light fell on his golden hair, the playful twinkle in his emerald eyes. She forgot about the sound of waves and wind when he was around. She only knew his voice complaining about the cold and the quicker pace of her heart.

Jaime could have taken the Iron Throne, she thought. He could even take it from his sister if he wanted it more. But ruling from a chair was not leading for Jaime. His place was in the battlefield, he had insisted. He spoke of it with such conviction that Brienne wondered if he needed believing it. If he too sensed what she’d only glimpsed—that he was more than capable of both sword and law.

When they spoke of these things, often whispered under the sheets or in an unused dusty chamber in the castle, Cersei was the farthest from her mind. Brienne also felt fearless of the possible repercussions of the affair. That she could let him love her as if a free man. How she could love him wholly. 

Memories made it harder waking up and finding him no longer snoring next to her. His presence was a comfort. His thoughts led her to new doors and also served as pillars.

This she found out during a complaint about living lords being monsters. Why would someone give their lives to someone with a black, festering soul?

“Anyone who wants to lead should have a bit of the monstrous within” Jaime had remarked. “Being a leader and giving commands—it’s a small part of it. The easiest too, I would say. It’s making choices that shows who you are. Under all the fancy cloaks would we find a beast or a person? How much of a difference is there? Can you still be a person once with a crown on your head?”

Now was not the time for sentiment, certainly not when there was an attack just waiting for the right time. She resolutely focused back on Orlyn who was busying unrolling another scroll.

“If this—” her voice cracked, drawing Orlyn’s stare. Blushing, she continued, “this Colcheseter. If he wishes to visit, hold him off.”

“It’s exactly what he hopes to do, my lady. Pay his respects.”

“Emphasize that the wind carries his kind thoughts to Evenfall and they are more than satisfactory. We can’t afford another host. What food we have is for soldiers, our servants and the poor. He’ll have to farm or catch whatever he wants to eat.”

“Indeed, my lady.” Orlyn agreed.

The other scrolls were from Broad Arch and Nightsong. The wife of Alesander Staedmon, lord of Broad Arch, had given birth to a daughter after a series of stillbirths and miscarriages. Nightsong reported that the famine continued to take lives and people were beginning to leave to chance food and survival elsewhere.

“Do we have enough in the Tarth treasury to send at least a small aid?” Brienne asked.

“I’m afraid not, my lady. Your heart is in the right place. But we need to put Tarth first.”

Brienne could only nod but she did not entirely agree. With a sigh, she rose from her seat to stand in front of the window.

It was another day of little light. Thick dark gray clouds looked ready to crash on the sand where a small group of men and women moved about. From the sea she saw faint white strokes of gale, so powerful that everyone on the beach had to dig their feet deep in the sand to remain upright. The rafts they dragged and arranged shook as if to escape their grips.

They were her soldiers. A small force chosen specifically for battle in the water. Though too far away, she knew that her handmaidens Dyrna, Santi and Sorelle were hard at work with them.

They were the only members of the household hired by Humfrey Brienne had allowed to remain. The rest she had ordered off the island, giving them only until sundown before serving them with violence.

Perhaps Jaime was right. And she was not so different from the new lord of Blackhaven, she thought. Not one drop of blood had spilled in executing her order but the threat had been real. Words weren’t always just wind. They could be sharper than swords. The three handmaidens were examples of it.

She had never planned to have any woman in the army but realized like her, they could be taught to fight. Dyrna, Santi and Sorelle possessed formidability that men twice their size only had half of. Despite fears, they had stood by her, protected her as much as they could from Humfrey—lied that she was unwell when she was summoned after being abused for several nights in a row. Treated her bruises with compresses, stayed with her when terrors that couldn’t be exorcised from her mind stalked her in sleep. Spooned the thinnest broth to her lips when she could barely swallow.

Strength and courage like were always invaluable. The kind you needed next to you in battle.

“I have a question to ask of you,” Brienne told Orlyn, turning away from the window. The old maester looked at her expectantly.

Dark robes and heavy chains were a contrast to the maester’s pink-cheeked, somewhat jolly countenance. He looked more like a grandfather who gathered children by the fire to tell them the wildest, most vivid of tales rather than a man who knew potions and poisons. As quick as he was to suture a wound, so was he with a dagger to sink in a vital artery. Brienne was one of the few to know of this skill.

“I require the truth.”

“It’s yours, my lady.” He put away the scrolls to give his full attention.

“Were we wrong?” She asked, hand lowering to her sword. _Oathkeeper._ She stroked the tip with her thumb, thinking of Jaime. Her heart fluttered with warmth and also clenched in pain. “Did we fight for the wrong side?”

Surprise scudded across Orlyn’s face. He seemed to still, from breath to the slightest twitch of muscle, before his shoulders noticeably lowered. The small movements revealed a man who had fallen to pieces from her question and now, staring at back at her, was carefully gathering himself. Picking up the pieces he needed. Assembling them as needed. Her hold on Oathkeeper tightened. She herself was rattled by the question.

“We’re caught between a dragon and a lion. A winter with no end.” She gestured at the raven scrolls. “Famine in the Parchments now. A mysterious illness killing the few livestock Rain House has left, and the meat not even fit for consumption. I can’t help but wonder,” she confessed. “These trials. . .this. . .bloodletting forced on us. . .would it be so different if we’d sided with House Lannister? Boltons are now Wardens of the North. The Freys not only richer but even more powerful. The Tarlys now hold The Reach.”

“My lady. . .you ask a question that’s deceptively simple. But it requires answers, not just one. And I doubt if any of them will satisfy us both.”

“The truth, Orlyn. Please.”

“A part of your question asks, though not explicitly, if we brought our present trials to ourselves. Now what knowledge I have comes from books. Reading so many until I believe myself to understand enough to make judgment that is hopefully sound. Choices are absolute but over time you see that your reasons behind some of them change. Some you regret. Some you become more sure of. The gods know I struggle with being able to live with my choices, of what I had understood of the world at the time I made them. My lady,” he said, “it is from that space where part of my answer to your question comes from. None of the trials we face now is our fault.”

“H-How can that be? I joined Renly because. . because I-I loved him.” The tips of her ears warmed. She had been so young then. “I believed in him. There was no other king for me.”

His kindness towards her was all she had needed. Even when he’d broken her heart in marrying Margaery. Men like Renly were never for the likes for her. There had been much difficulty accepting that but when she had, the next choices became easier: fighting for him, the inevitability of dying for him. She was not made for love or be loved, as her old septa and Ronnet Connington told her. But she would live and die with honor. For Renly.

Though she had long come around to it during the war, a little fire of longing remained. For once again to be that girl of fifteen blushing in Renly’s arms as they danced, his lips warming her ear as he told her to keep her head up and never show her tears to anyone intent on tearing her apart. That one time was enough to follow and love him.

“Had father not answered his call to arms, I would have snuck away in the night and joined him,” she murmured to herself.

“My lady, Renly had the promise to win. He had the numbers. The gold. The perfect queen in Margaery. Indeed, we lost. But it doesn’t mean we chose the wrong side.”

“How can you say that? Until Cersei halted reparations, we hardly saw gold. Now there’s little gold and our stores often close to depleted. Our soldiers are relearning to fight with weapons while is Daenerys practically at our door. Lyonel—”

Plague upon plague may fall upon the Stormlands but it was her son that would break her in one strike. Her knuckles whitened from gripping Oathkeeper but what strength she imagined to have drawn from it did little in easing the familiar pain in her heart.

“I know to be a good lord of this House and the region he must go out and see the world,” she declared. “I just wish he wasn’t so young when he began. I wish his absence is because of that and not in fulfilment of one of our many promises in having lost the war. I tell myself sometimes it’s better he’s far from all the trials that deluge us but I’m still his mother. He’s safest with _me._ Only _I_ can guarantee his protection. Only _I_ can do more than keep his head above the water. And now. . .now. . .I don’t know. My own uncertainty,” she blurted out, “frightens me.”

“My lady,” Orlyn was sympathetic.

“I apologize.” She said after a moment. “I thought long ago it would get easier.”

“I don’t think it should.”

“Much of my life I was scorned for everything of which I had no hand in. The daughter no father deserved. The woman not even the blindest and most desperate of men would want. A false warrior because of what I lack between the legs. My son gave me the chance to love without being shamed for it. He is the first to love me for all I am.” Brienne’s hand drifted to her stomach, remembering still the press and weight of her son when he lived there. “I don’t need him here because I need assurance of love or anything else, Orlyn. I want him here because this is where he belongs. In storms there’s at least respite. Surrounded by lions, hounds, knights who dragged from under the bed and stabbed repeatedly children they swore to protect, I worry that my son will become a stranger. Or worse.”

“But my lady, Lord Marbrand’s letters always praise him for his intelligence and skill with the sword. All while remaining humble.”

“Humility in Lannisport is a lot different from our understanding of it in Tarth. We lost, Orlyn,” she said. “We lost more than gold. What sons other lords of this region would have will grow up seeing only rocks and cursing our storms rather knowing they are armor and shield. I should be the one to teach that to my son. How could an Evenstar be a light in darkness when he knows nothing of us? How can you tell me we’re not wrong?”

Saying everything she had kept inside for so long had her flinging a hand to the window to steady herself. She continued gripping Oathkeeper’s hilt with the other. Tiredness fell on her faster since Jaime’s departure. They may not have had a parting of hearts but she felt hers splintering into more pieces each day he had been gone.

There was hardly a difference from when Lyonel had left. The pain of her son’s absence ebbed little when a new letter arrived. But seeing his childish scrawl turn into crooked and now the slightly elegant script of an older boy caused something in her to break even more.

Many times she wondered if his hair still smelled slightly of the wind touched with brine and the sweetness of a child. If his cheeks were still as round. Had his freckles disappeared or multiplied? How did he hold the sword? What was his favorite stance, his weapon of choice? Was he learning other weapons?

Feeling the intricate carvings of lion and the jut of its eyes gave her some strength through this storm of longing. She breathed and watched her breath fog the glass. Evenfall Hall was a lot colder now. It had been cold long before this winter because the great halls did not echo with the laughter and footfalls of a child. What little warmth there was Jaime had taken with him.

Her eyes drifted to the doors, all while thinking herself a fool. Of course he wasn’t there. If only she stopped imagining, hoping, that he was at every corner. If only she could have one day where she didn’t imagine his warm gaze on her.

“My lady, even if we had chosen to side with lions, for as long as dragons live they will return. Winter will still come. And one of them is here now. The other. . .who knows.” Orlyn stood up and went to her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he said, “Learn from the past, my lady, but try not to dwell on them. There is hope yet.”

She managed a smile. “Where would I be without your guidance, I wonder?”

“Lost is one thing you will never be. Even as a child,” he added, his eyes shining with pride, “you subscribed to only what’s right. You being out there and time have grayed that. Still, you are ever more sure. I can tell. I know.”

“Quite a burden you place on my shoulders, that,” she half-jested, turning back to the window. He stood beside her and looked out too.

“The queen owes you a huge debt for finding a way to fulfill her mad order for ships in so little time. We might just break Daenerys’ forces enough to survive. The rest of the kingdom can fuck themselves.” Despite her harsh tone, Orlyn nodded. “We fight for the people. I will live for my son.”

Someone knocked on the door and it opened. A guard stepped in, bowing to her. “My lady, the horses are ready.”

“Shall we?” Brienne asked Orlyn.

The saddled horses and a retinue of soldiers waited for them outside the castle. Brienne got on and led them past the gates.

They charged down the steep slopes of the mountain. Rocks were dislodged and fell into the ocean, the loud howl and powerful smash of the wind muffling their fall. In no time at all the horses were galloping on sand, the waves wetting their legs and making them neigh. Their arrival drew the drills to a halt. Santi broke from the flanks to take hold of the reins as Brienne climbed down.

The handmaiden’s long raven locks of her hair were now kept away from her face in a braid similar to Brienne’s. Draped across her shoulders was a blue cloak with the Tarth sigil on the center. Her coat was the same blue color on which a breastplate bordered with crescents and suns rested. She wore close-fitting tan breeches and shiny boots that went up to the knee.

“Ser Brienne,” she murmured with a quick curtsy.

Brienne started at the new title. Pride and hurt swirled in her heart and she had to keep her gaze ahead instead of the sea. She stared hard at the reed rafts arranged on the beach, and as she walked, noted the archery stands next. One showed arrows crowded right on the smallest ring.

Turning to the group, she said, “I need the name of the marksmen.”

There was some murmured excited chatter before Dyrna stepped forward. “I am one of them, ser,” she said. The blue of her clothes showed the rich, deep olive tone of her skin. She was not very tall but her slight form meant she moved with speed and agility. “The others are Sorelle and Larosh.” 

Brienne nodded, pleased that two of her handmaidens knew how to handle bow and arrow. Once the three have joined her, she told Dyrna and Sorelle, “It seems you’ve proven me right in relieving you of your domestic duties.” She glanced at Larosh, who was six and twenty like her. He wasn’t as tall but possessed thick powerful shoulders and arms and chest widened from hefting sacks of flour when he had been a baker’s assistant.

“Good work,” she told him. “There may be hope for us yet because of fighters like you.”

Unlike the soldiers Goodwin trained in sword and hand-to-hand combat, Brienne’s chosen group of soldiers were highly skilled in swimming, sailing and archery. They were also small in number, forty to the few hundred under Goodwin.

“When you were called to this group, you were warned that each day more will be asked of you. The more you learn, the stronger you get, the harder the work becomes.” Brienne gestured at the row of rafts behind her. “And today, we take to the water again.”

She didn’t have to look hard to see their trepidation going into the water. She had to shout over the howl of the winds but they still had to lean in to hear her properly. The wind also blew at their heavy cloaks. She knew as well as they did that getting in the water was to plunge into ice.

“We are fortunate Maester Orlyn discovered that our ancestors used reed rafts, which grows aplenty in Tarth. But in order to face Targaryen ships, we need to master the rafts as our forefathers did. There is no use to being the biggest in the sea if hardly maneuverable—that which our rafts possess and ships don’t. Daenerys Targaryen’s sellswords, Unsullied and Dothraki may be masters of sword and any weapon with a sharp end but they know nothing about water. And we do. We will bring the storm to them.”

Her words were met with cheers. Brienne let them for a few moments before holding up her hand. “So let’s continue with our drills. Once again, four in a raft, three to sail and one to wield bow and arrow.” She pointed at the water where sacks hung from a makeshift railing. “You shall take turns sailing and shooting at the target. When you’ve finished, you’ll ride for the castle. The first to arrive not only enjoys a feast of meat and fruits.” The cheers were louder. “There’s a skin of Arbor red.”

This got the loudest and most enthusiastic cheer. As the fighters began ribbing at each other, Brienne continued. “That’s the reward anyway, for being the first. As for the last. . .they will have to put away the rafts and tomorrow prepare them for the same drill.”

As they helped each other put on the vests, Brienne reluctantly surrendered Oathkeeper to Orlyn. She joined Dyrna, Santi and a young boy named Cassius. He worked in the kitchens of Evenfall Hall, one of the boys in charge of turning the roasts in the spit.

They carried the raft over their heads then turned it over to put in the water. Brienne, Santi and Cassius grasped their oars and rowed to the target. Dyrna got her bow and arrow ready.

Brienne’s arms were sore moments after rowing through choppy water. Huge waves came from all directions, capsizing rafts and sending bodies underwater before they bobbed up gasping.

As they approached the target, Santi got ready to shoot the first arrow. The strong current had her wobbling on the knee as she fought to steady to ensure her aim was true. She drew the bowstring back tautly and then it happened.

Edged with thick, icy foam, a wave that seemed as high and wide as a castle slammed into them once, twice, before tipping over the raft. Brienne felt herself scooped in the water in an almost tender hold before it flung her down violently. Her cry was cut off as the raft hit her head, sending her faster into the depths of the world below.

The mountains of Tarth were replaced by the sea of blue. The icy water was a thousand spikes stabling her all over at once. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, laced with ripples of bubbles that grew smaller the further she fell. She kicked and pushed against the pull of the darkening depths, refusing to look away from the fading orb of pale sun.

The sea spat her out. As she gasped, another waved surged. The suddenness of it bashed the edge of the raft to her head. Pain exploded behind her eyeballs.

“My lady!” Dyrna shrieked. She was on her left, clinging to her vest with one hand while the other kept moving in circles in the water. Cassius was with her, grunting while pushing the raft to right it. “Ser!”

“It’s too—” Another wave pushed Santi back underwater. She resurfaced, flailing her arms and coughing.

“Quickly,” Brienne ordered Dyrna, blinking through the blood dripping to her eyes. The handmaiden nodded and together they swam to Santi. It took all four to right the raft. Brienne managed to climb on first then pulled the others out of the water.

Dyrna snatched one of their oars from the water as did Cassius. Santi had managed to keep her bow. Brienne grabbed the few arrows floating close by and handed them to her.

After Santi’s arrow hit the target, they rowed back to the shore for the next round. There were no more mishaps for their group afterwards but the others were not so lucky. Nevertheless, they were still the third to arrive at Evenfall Hall.

While loud, boisterous toasts and laughter filled the great hall, Brienne was in her chambers with her other handmaidens. Stripped of her wet clothes, they wrapped her in a thick robe and poured her wine to cleanse the lingering brine in her mouth.

“Will I need stitches?” She asked Dyrna, wincing from the burn of wine on her injury. Dyrna had just thrown a cloak over her damp clothes and insisted on cleaning the wound. They were by the fire to better see her cut and get warm. 

“No, ser. Thank the gods. But you will have a big bruise tomorrow.”

Once it was cleaned and everything for her wash-up was ready, she dismissed the women. She swished a hand in the basin to test the warmth as she gave her last order.

“After my meal, send Maester Orlyn and Santi to me.”

“Yes, my lady. So shall it be.” Dyrna said.

Only when the doors closed did she disrobe. Winter was sharp little spikes digging in her skin, the pain in her nipples making her pause and gasp. Draft stirred the hairs of her cunt. The ache that swelled was now familiar but she still felt quite weak and lightheaded for a few moments.

 _Jaime._ Only his touch soothed it. As days piled from his departure, the pain had become more acute.

She moved gingerly, picking up washcloth to dip then wring over the washbasin. Its rough, damp touch had done of the wonderful sensation of his lips. Even her own hands didn’t come close to the bumps and callouses of his palms warming her. _Jaime._ The only one to ever touch her so much—with longing, with desire.

A sword in hand sparked her to life. But Jaime’s hands and kisses told why she _must_ live.

Every pass of the cloth on her skin deepened the pink of it and caused her breath to stutter. The fire couldn’t completely banish the chill in the chamber. Yet somehow, she found some warmth in memories with Jaime. She pressed the cloth to her breasts, closing her eyes.

It was afternoon. Just before day crossed into the silver of the evening before complete darkness. Tired and bruised from sparring with Goodwin, she had skipped her usual swim in the cove. She met Jaime halfway back to the castle, as he had been on his way to meet her. A few kisses and it was decided they should retreat in one of the deserted watch towers.

The watchtower shuddered and whined from their thrusting bodies. They undressed only enough to do what was needed. Away from the walls of Evenfall Hall, its eyes and ears, Brienne screamed Jaime’s name as his cock repeatedly hit a spot in her that sent her higher and higher into the known heavens.

She was still dazed and seemed half in a dream in the aftermath but felt every kiss he lavished on her throat and his hands on the ties of her tunic before baring her breasts. As she moved to lay on her back, she yelped and Jaime paused.

“Are you hurt, wench?”

“I can manage.” She moved again and he shifted to her side. The sight of his cock, big and gleaming from her fucking her made her forget about the pain until she tried touching the spot on her back. He helped turn her and gasped.

“What the fuck is this? This is a boot print.”

“Goodwin.” She chuckled. She gazed at him, touched by his worry and fury. “It’s nothing,” she said, stilling his hand from touching her back. The pain told her the bruise had to be sizable. “We were sparring, as you know. I got distracted and he taught me a lesson. A few times, actually.”

“Tell me you learned.” He bent and kissed it. She swallowed, wondering when had anyone ever kissed her like that, right where she hurt.

“Orlyn will have to set his nose straight.”

He smiled and kissed her on the mouth this time. Then he pulled away to spread their cloaks under her. She thought to pull up her breeches but he shook his head, making her blush.

For each article of clothing removed from her, she turned redder. Her skin was a vivid lobster color by the time he had removed everything. He had undressed too.

He was beautiful. Perfect. Even in the way he was scarred, she saw. Because he was the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms, he had very few. She kissed the small raised puckered flesh on his shoulder.

He laughed and pulled her to his chest. “A true wench you are.”

She lowered her hand to his cock. “`Tis the only sword that pleases me so much I’d want it inside me all day.”

He traced the full, thick lips that had spoken such boldness. “It begs much belief wench, but I did not come here to fuck you. It is definitely one of the reasons to visit the Sapphire Isle. And stay.”

She fought to suppress the little smile tugging at the corners of her lips but lost. She rested her head on his chest. As he gently caressed her back, her shoulders, hips, she wondered if would feel this warm again. This safe.

She clung, heart too heavy from words of prayers she couldn’t quite say, even to herself. He continued touching her. His touch was the summer sun on the scarred planes of her.

“What happened here?” he nuzzled the mark right at her shoulder. It was on the same spot as his but where his scar was a longish slash, hers was round.

“An arrow. That one day I refused to wear my mail. Orlyn was livid.”

“Rightfully. An arrow could have landed on your heart and the Tarth line ends.” She gasped as he kissed it.

“I was sent to my chamber without supper that night,” she admitted, recalling Selwyn’s fury. Starve or be beaten, he’d told her. She chose the latter. He sent her away.

Her heart raced from the heat of his kisses. Picking up her arm, he gently turned it and gestured at the pale constellation of marks there. “What about this?”

“A morningstar. I stupidly raised my arm rather than the shield.”

He shook his head. “You’re not made of steel, Brienne.”

She touched his lips, marveling at the softness of skin despite the firm shape, its contrast from thick bristles of his beard. “You fuck me like I’m made of it.”

“Trust me, you don’t feel like steel at all.” As she turned away to hide futilely her burning face and neck from his playful leer, he moved down her body. Nudged her thighs apart with his knees. The wind blew just then, making her shiver and blush even more as it picked up the musk of her juices and his seed pooled in her cunt.

“I wonder if you still have it,” he murmured, spreading her thighs wider. She covered her face hearing her pubic hairs rustling in the wind. He chuckled, his breath stirring the curls even more.

“What in Seven Hells are you looking for?” She finally removed her hands from her face and saw him squinting at something on her thigh. “Jaime?”

He suddenly smiled. “There it is. _My_ scar.”

“Gods,” she whispered, remembering. Of course. His first mark on her from that long-ago fight.

He scooped up her hips and pressed his mouth on her cunt. She sobbed from the sharp pleasure of his slurps. Needy, hungry draws of his mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes as his tongue parted her folds and thrust and thrust and thrust.

How could something. . .something _like this_ make her feel cared for? Loved? Each wet lash destroyed her. She was also reborn. Gasping as she felt the first waves of her impending release, she grasped Jaime by the hair, pulling him away to find air through his kiss. His tongue thrust in her mouth as his cock slipped back inside her.

“They’re rounder,” Jaime told her later as she lit the lamp.

“What is?”

She hung the lamp and that was when he came to her from behind, squeezing her breasts through her tunic.

“You’re still tight as a maiden, wench, but your breasts say another story.” She clamped a hand over her lips to smother a giggle as he continued squeezing and weighing them experimentally. Then he turned her around, his smile wicked while loosening the ties until the tunic opened enough to bare the mounds in question.

“I remember when they were pointy little buds. I’ve always your nipples were ridiculously long. Now I know it’s what makes them so perfect for nursing.” As he spoke, he played with them, pinching one gently. “You have plump breasts now. They were full of milk when Lyonel was a babe, were they not? Else they wouldn’t be so round.”

She shook her head, laughing. As she pulled her tunic closed, she said, “They’re not that round.”

“A lot rounder now,” he insisted, looking up at her. Hugging her around the waist, he drew her close until their foreheads touched. “You must have filled out your bodice.”

When she said nothing, he blinked and cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I know—you said you couldn’t have babes anymore. I don’t mean to be insensitive.”

“You’re not,” she assured him. “But. . .it wasn’t the easiest time. Humfrey hardly touched me which was a blessing. But I-I feared every time he tried and remembered why he shouldn’t.” She pulled his hand to her belly. “I-I feared. . .Jaime, I lived for every flutter and faint little thump from Lyonel when he was inside me. Every time I refused my husband I was terrified he would do something that would stop Lyonel from. . .from. . .”

She still couldn’t speak it. It was still too frightening. “I let him do things to me to keep my baby safe.”

“Brienne.” Jaime embraced her. She snuggled deep against his chest. For once, she wasn’t the strong one. For the first time, someone held her as she surrendered to that old fear. A fear that would only retreat, always waiting behind the wings to catch her unawares.

A few scattered stars gleamed in the sky by the time they thought to leave. Jaime, lantern in hand, preceded her down the ladder, jumping to the ground in his impatience to cover the last steps. He helped her down.

Brienne felt she was that young girl again from a long time ago—before her septa told that the mirror would never hide the truth from her, before boys ridiculed her.

On their slow ride back to the castle, Jaime asked more questions about Lyonel. Was he born bald or with some hair? How soon did he begin to walk?

A window latched improperly suddenly opened, inviting a swift, sharp gust of icy evening air to fill the chamber. Brienne dropped the washcloth and hurriedly closed it, the warmth of the water and the fireplace quickly leaving her skin. She hurriedly dressed but found her movements slow because of the ache in her cunt.

It was an ache that only Jaime could soothe. The same with the heaviness in her heart. Only Jaime.

For one moment of pure insanity, she thought of storming to the docks and ordering a ship to follow Jaime.

Knowing that another night without him awaited her, she sat down to eat, barely tasting the rare treat of fresh herbs lacing it. By the time Orlyn and Santi entered the chamber, Brienne was desperate to go to bed, just to get over the pain and perhaps, the new day could be bade to arrive faster.

“There was good work done today, Santi. In you is the promise of a battle commander sooner than you might think.”

Santi was unable to hide her surprise and stared back at her open-mouthed. Brienne flushed, hoping she hadn’t embarrassed the girl or herself. Mercifully, Santi picked her jaw off the floor and cleared her throat. “My thanks, ser.”

“Maester Orlyn, the reed rafts, though efficient, would need to be made sturdier against our waters. As they are now, they can definitely be used. But improvements are necessary. For the rest of the Stormlands to begin making them, we’ll need to know the best way to craft them so we won’t be tossed about like a paper boat.”

“I agree, my lady,” Orlyn assured her. “In fact I have begun to make notes for improvements from my observation of today’s drills.”

“Good. We will meet at first darklight tomorrow, all of us.” Brienne turned to Santi “Tell your fellow soldiers the same. Be in complete gear and dress warmly. We will be running.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Brienne dismissed them. The handmaidens returned to clear away the dishes and goblets and turn down the bed, removing the bed warmers. Dyrna she noticed had donned back the breeches she wore when within the castle.

While Brienne sat at her desk, the fireplace was swept of ashes and fresh logs put in. Fire crackled and the cold retreated a little. Tall tallow candles replaced the stubs in the nozzles. She wrinkled her nose from the smell of animal coming from the candles.

Once alone, Brienne went to the trunk to retrieve a stack of letters. Most of them were old, the latest from a moon ago. All from Lyonel. She knew each letter by word but she always read them every night before bd, and when Jaime was around, before she snuck to his chamber.

She ached to see her son. Wondered how tall he was now. How his voice sounded now—the sweetness of a child’s or was it now laced with the cracks of manhood seeping in.

She saw him grow through words, how he went from addressing her to ‘Mother,’ to ‘My dear lady mother.’ He wrote about other squires he had befriended, that they held Lord Addam to the highest of esteem. He wrote of the Sunset Sea, which he claimed to see in the far horizon if he squinted and angled his head a certain way.

_“. . .winter has grayed the water but in the rare times the sun braeks darkness, the blue would return. It is a most welcome blue, mother, but far from the brilliance found in our isle. Forgive me for again I speak of how much I miss home. Sometimes I wonder if home had been a dream, that perhaps the blue of Tarth’s water I remember was never real. I still look for traces of home after all this time. I find only crumbs. They are enough most days but it is the knowledge that they are just shards of what I know to be true that hurt._

_I shall be better in the next correspondence, mother. The good lord Ser Addam Marbrand has been generous in praising you for your strength and bravery in the wars fought before my birth. It is your footsteps I wish to follow._

_Your son,_

_Lyonel_

Brienne clutched this last letter to her heart careful to not crush it. What she would give to hear him.

Suddenly weary, she retied the ribbon around the bundle and stashed it back in the trunk. She pulled out Jaime’s blanket, pressing her nose in the smell of him in the fur before dragging out the rest. She tossed the heavy blanket on the bed then took Oathkeeper from its hook on the wall. It joined the blanket.

The candles were kept burning rather than snuffed out. She shrugged off her robe and climbed under the furs, fingers wrapping around the sword’s hilt.

It seemed a breath or two have only passed since closing her eyes when she heard the sound of a pained wail abruptly cut off. She jerked, fingers quickly grasping Oathkeeper when the cold tip of a blade pressed at her cheek.

“I think not, Lady Brienne, if you wish to live.”

She stiffened from the sound of the voice. Only when the blade moved to press at the side of her neck did she turn to see.

_“Goodwin.”_

He grabbed her by the hair to yank her up to her knees, causing the blanket to slip. Keeping his hold, he moved the sword to the tender line between her chin and throat. Through the clouds of breath rapidly escaping her lips, Brienne saw five other men at the foot of her bed.

The little light from flickering flames revealed four with similar features of dark braids hanging long past their shoulders and woven with bells. Under heavy, thick black eyebrows peered sharp eyes that barely gave her face a pass but lingered on her breasts.

The crescent-shaped swords at their hands told her who they were. _Who was here._ Blood dripped from the blades.

The fifth man was moving to grab her cloak from the chair. Brienne glimpsed his three-pronged purple beard before he tossed the items at her.

“Get dressed, my lady.” His accent was rolling silk.

“Why?” Brienne hissed at Goodwin. She ignored his sword and stood up, taking Oathkeeper. The men shouted warnings at her in the Common Tongue and other languages she couldn’t understand.

“Believe it or not, this is for your own good. And your son’s.” Goodwin said. “I’m trying to save you from making the same mistake as your father. Now put your clothes on. Don’t make her wait.”

“Forgive us for staring,” drawled the bearded man. “No one said the women here are built to bring storms.” Then he spoke to the Dothraki, who grunted before turning away. He however, remained facing Brienne. He shrugged. “To make sure you and your master at arms don’t double-cross us.”

“The sword, my lady.” Goodwin nodded at Oathkeeper. “If you wish to keep your head, you’ll hand it over to me.”

“Why, because you haven’t done enough? You mean to kill me if I don’t?”

“If you press me. Don’t forget I taught you everything. Before you can think of any move I already know.”

She had no doubt. But she could take all of them. Knew who to attack first. Who to kill and who to use as a human shield. She would survive. She was sure of it.

 _Daenerys._ It made Brienne ill knowing she had infiltrated the castle through Goodwin, of all people. _Who else?_ _How far was her reach?_

And how soon would Cersei know of Brienne’s failure? Which of her ravens would reach Ashemark first to give the order to execute Lyonel?

The latter drew all thoughts of fight and resistance from her. Her heart heavy, she surrendered Oathkeeper to Goodwin. “Don’t take a liking to it. I will get it back.”

“Only you would regard leavings from the kingslayer as gold.”

Brienne’s nostrils flared as she swallowed another urge to hurt him. To kill. _Think. Wait._

She walked around the bed, ignoring and forcing them to move out of her way so she could reach the fireplace and take the breeches, hose and tunic hanging close by. She dressed quickly then picked up the cloak from the bed.

“What did she promise you?” She demanded to Goodwin as they hauled her out of the chamber. “Gold? A different maiden to bed every night? That’s what she promised you, didn’t she, for you to let these monsters through our door?”

“I swear before the Seven my intention is to protect you and your lord son.”

“And the rest of the region? All of Westeros?” Brienne grunted as the Dothraki gripped her painfully by the elbow.

“I had no idea your loyalty to Cersei runs deep.” He scoffed. “Is it her you truly wish to fight for? A tyrant who fucks her brother, who’s more interested in blood than ruling?”

“You think Daenerys will be different? Didn’t she fuck her brother too?”

As soon as she spoke, one of the Dothraki shouted and punched her in the stomach. Brienne folded over, more startled than hurt. The bearded man quickly got between her and the Dothraki. Even Goodwin drew a sword at her attacker.

The Dothraki pointed at her and spoke, unleashing a barrage of what she guessed were insults judging from how the bearded man tried to quiet him. Finally, he drew a stiletto from his side and pressed it to the Dothraki’s cheek, muttering. The other Dothraki shouted again and drew out their arakhs.

“Have your lady apologize,” the bearded man suddenly said.

“Whatever for?” Goodwin demanded.

“These men don’t speak the Common Tongue well but understand enough. You’ve insulted the queen,” the bearded man said to Brienne. “She wants you alive, my lady, but didn’t exactly specify you must be unharmed. I have no intention of harming you and I’m deadly with a blade. But so are my Dothraki friends. Apologize.”

“No. And I’m more than a lady. I’m a knight.”

“Then you leave me no choice, lady knight.” He pulled out what appeared to be leather bindings from his belt. “Tie her up.”

“You’re mad,” Goodwin protested. “She’s highborn!”

 _“Now.”_ The man ordered. “Or they’ll use her.”

“You’re aiding them!”

“I will not tell you again.”

So Brienne arms were pulled behind her and tied up. As Goodwin knotted the leather, the bearded man addressed her again. “I don’t advocate forcing a woman, lady knight. But if the choice were them doing that to you and keeping my life, I’ll choose myself.”

Then she was pushed and shoved again toward the hallway.

The smell of bowels and blood told her of the carnage ahead but it didn’t prepare her for what she saw.

Severed limbs and their bodies littered the hall. The few that had managed to keep all arms and legs flooded the floor with blood spurting from throats missing their heads.

But when she saw who was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, all the strength was drained from her. She crashed to her knees with a cry.

Orlyn lay wide-eyed and lifeless. The slashes on his chest and stomach had gouged out his entrails. His head had not been completely severed; blood continued to fountain out of the gaping wound. Next to him was a Dothraki with a dagger in where his eye used to be.

It was not her first time to see death and violence. The inhumanity, the _enjoyment_ these murdering bastards had was sickening. Her stomach turned, its soured contents spilling from her mouth. Her groans echoed in the hall.

A hand pulled her up roughly while she was still coughing and spitting the last of her sick. Something hot and volcanic fountained up in her then, taking hold of her mind and body. She watched her fist slam right into the nose of a Dothraki, the loud crack of breaking bone shattering the deathly silence. The next she took down with a bash of her head on his head. As she licked his blood that had spattered to her lips, a hard blow whammed her in the back of the skull.

As her legs twisted from the sudden drain of strength and darkness began to take over, she thought she glimpsed Dyrna from behind the pillar.

Regaining consciousness was a steep climb. The black void held her by the throat and continued pulling her into it. But she felt the icy breeze on her cheek. The salt in the air on her lips. That her body was on something hard and swaying. Tongues in language she didn’t understand.

She opened her eyes as a gloved hand slapped her none too gently on the cheeks. Goodwin. She tried pushing him away but her arms were still bound She looked past his weathered face to the sky above. A dark gray. _It will not be night for much longer._

He grabbed her by the row of bindings below her breasts to haul her up. As she swayed from the sudden rush of blood back to her legs, someone behind cut the bindings. She rubbed the feeling back to her wrists, scowling as Goodwin walked around her.

She was in a ship, she realized, seeing the faint movements of masts. The floorboards squeaked under her. The vessel swayed slightly, as did the barrels and few crates surrounding her. She blinked from the slap of her hair billowing to her eyes from the breeze. Goodwin suddenly leaned close as if to kiss her. She didn’t move away.

Her eyes sharpened glaring back at him, dropping them momentarily to his hips. He wore two swords. One of them Oathkeeper.

“Be smart for a change. “ His voice snared her eyes back to his face. Lamps being lit revealed crates and a few barrels on the ship and more Dothraki and sellswords. She also saw men dressed in identical black leathers wielding the same pikes. _Unsullied._

But what caused her stomach to drop was the few men and women on board. Faces she’d seen in various areas of Evenfall Hall. Cleaning the floors. Feeding the horses. Also soldiers. Soldiers under Goodwin and all the guards at the gate.

He smirked from the stunned expression she couldn’t hide. “Displease the queen and you leave me with no choice. Now move.”

“Do you think you still have a choice?” She shot back. As she took her first step, she slammed her shoulder on him, smirking as he staggered. She continued walking, her eyes forward. A man waited for her at the end.

The ship she was on was flanked by others but too few to comprise the armada Daenerys was believed to have. Brienne guessed she was hiding them in the same place she had retreated to. There had to be a cove in the isle she knew nothing about to make the attack on her castle and Goodwin’s betrayal possible.

The man waiting for her shone like a beacon of light. His white hair and white cloak, the silver of his armor shone like lightning. His blue eyes and lighter skin told he was from Westeros. Once she was close enough, she saw that the blue of his eyes was that of a clear sky, yet secretive.

“The queen has been expecting you, Lady Brienne.” His voice was a clear booming sound over the loud waves and winds.

“I’m a ser.”

He looked amused. “And who was the knight that made you so?”

“Jaime. _Ser_ Jaime Lannister.”

_“My brother?”_

The speaker was a small man a few steps behind him. His clothes were fine but his hands were bound in front of him. Brienne didn’t need to look any closer to know who he was.

“Jaime Lannister.” The white-haired man’s voice drew her back to him. “He should have been stripped of the white for betraying his king. A blackheart that had no right to the white in the first place. Alas but I was the lone voice against him becoming Kingsguard at sixteen.”

“Barristan Selmy,” Brienne breathed. She stared at him for a few breaths before speaking again. “You speak as if he’s the only one who’s betrayed his king.”

“I was forced out and everyone in that hall I would have cut like cake. Better I had left then, for that little monster is no king.”

Talk of Jaime sent a burst of courage through her. “What of a king who has fathers and sons burned alive before each other’s eyes? A king who wished for all of King’s Landing to burn?”

Before Barristan could respond a screech ripped through the sky. Brienne instinctively bent while everyone else simply looked up. Heart pounding in her chest, she raised her eyes. 

In the horizon transforming from a black starless night to a gray still refusing to yield even the thinnest sliver of light were huge bursts of fire. Winged creatures dark as doom and monstrous even from afar crossed this tapestry before circling the ship. One suddenly swooped down, letting out another cry that promised blood and death. It didn’t fly directly overhead but Brienne still smelled burnt flesh from its breath. Felt the swoop of wings that sent the ship swaying side to side.

The first creature turned out to be just half the size of the second beast approaching next. Scales not unlike the black and crimson of Oathkeeper, its head was almost the size of the ship. Its spread wings blocked out most of the beach. Eyes the color of fire and blood looked at her as she froze. It slowed once alongside the ship before stilling, its leathery wings continuing to beat but with a strange gentleness. Still the ships around continued to sway, masts straining and taut.

Daenerys Targaryen alighted from the beast. Silver in hair, skin pale as the moon, her clothes a vivid blue crossed every so slightly with green. Around her waist was a thick belt carved with shapes Brienne couldn’t decipher clearly.

  


She watched the younger woman make stairs of the dragon’s scales on the wing before the latter moved to put her right on the ship. As Daenerys walked, the soft tinkling sound of bells was heard. They were woven in braids that flowed to her hips.

  


Everyone except her bowed. Brienne jumped when the dragon suddenly took off, once again returning to its place in the sky with the others. Steering her gaze away, she found Daenerys looking up at her. Her purple eyes, she thought, had seen much. And far.

  


“At last we meet.” Her voice had the husk of Old Valyrian, bringing to mind the image of soft smoke lingering after a fire. She offered a small hand to Brienne. “Until my ships sailed your shores, much of you was a mystery.”

  


“My shores?” Brienne kept her hands to her sides, ignoring the warning glances from Barristan and Goodwin. Even the bearded man who had been among her captors shook his head, frowning.

  


“They are not mine. I hold them for the queen. Cersei Lannister.” She spat out the name.

  


Someone bristled, followed by the unmistakable clang of steel before a brusque voice suggesting warning spoke. Daenerys seemed unperturbed by her refusal and the mention of the queen she intended to unseat. Her expression was serene. Once could even say it was kind.

  


Brienne wasn’t fooled.

  


“You fight for a queen who has warned you she will take your son’s head if you fail?”

  


_Lyonel._ His name cut to her belly. “I. . .I have no intention of failing.”

  


“No, you don’t. I have come to know you have very little room for it, especially when it involves sword and the woman you call queen. But a false queen, I’ve gathered.”

  


“King Joffrey died and then King Tommen. Neither had an heir. She is the queen.”

  


“And her daughter? Forgotten and perhaps long dead. If she were alive she’d be stabbed and stung by spears and vipers every time she is awake. If the Dornish are merciful enough to allow a Lannister rest between tortures. But I did not invite you here for debate, Lady Brienne.”

  


“Ser. I’m more than a lady.”

  


“Ser?” Daenerys looked confused and stared at her clothes. Then Barristan.

  


“The Kingslayer has taken to giving titles and honors like they are coins for the starved.”

  


“I was not invited,” Brienne snapped. “Your men killed my soldiers. Servants. Women. Innocents. Many defenseless. Whatever bargain you’ve made with my double-crossing master-of-arms and his followers will land you in debt you can never pay.”

  


“Defenseless?” Scoffed the bearded man. “Dress or breeches your women knew the difference between needle and knife.”

  


Brienne tried not to think of her handmaidens How she could have sent them away instead of offering them to stay and serve. _What reward is there in having them give their lives for me?_

  


“Blood is not how I rule,” Daenerys said to her. She seemed unbothered by her words.

  


“Why am I here? What do you want?”

  


Barristan shook his head. “You will address her with respect, _Lady_ Brienne.”

  


“ _Ser_ Brienne,” Daenerys insisted.

  


“It’s a title I deserve. And earned.”

  


“Then I expect the same from you, Ser Brienne. I earned every braid and bell. See how long mine and the Dothraki’s braids are? That’s because we’ve never lost. Accept me as your queen and you will have my protection and loyalty. Your son as well.”

  


“With all due respect, you will not be mine.”

  


“Is it courage or foolishness why you refuse me? Your lords need only take one look at my dragons to swear their swords and lives to me.”

  


“What do you mean?”

  


A young woman dressed in a long coat went to stand next to Daenerys. A look passed between them then Daenerys raised her arms. The woman removed the belt and approached Brienne, offering it to her.

  


Brienne hesitated then took it. The belt was steel and each buckle stood for a sigil, she saw. A crescent moon over a field of spruce trees. A rooster’s head. Crossed trumpets beneath three stags. Black nightingales. She handed the belt back to the woman.

  


“So some Houses of the region have chosen you,” she said to Daenerys as it was returned around her waist. “That explains why the lot of them have been silent.”

  


“Where you failed to liberate them from hunger and despair, I offered and fulfilled twice and more.” The rest refuse to surrender but each day my armies besiege them more of your people die. Waiting for you. They don’t know that I not only hold the lands but also the sky.”

  


“You say you don’t rule with blood. You definitely conquer with it.”

  


“I don’t slaughter people for sport.”

  


“If it’s not slaughter holding land and sky hostage to bend people to your will what is it then? Why should I believe your promise of protection for my son when you had people betray me to you? And if people within my castle can easily turn against me for you, what’s the guarantee no one is sailing for King’s Landing as we speak?”

  


It was too horrific an idea to contemplate. That someone was in Cersei’s employ just waiting for her fail so Lyonel would be executed. As Brienne struggled inside to fight for what little life fluttered in her in a world without her son, Daenerys addressed her again.

  


“It seems you’ve made your choice then.”

  


“There’s no choice to make. My son—” Brienne’s voice broke. _“He’s dead.”_

There was nothing left when the lone light of this world was gone. As she saw the darkness awaiting her in Daenerys’ eyes, an arrow lit by fire flew between them. It hit a Dothraki square in the chest.

  


In their shock and confusion, they could only stare at his fallen lifeless body before the next one fell, a sellsword this time. He choked and clawed at the hole gouged by the next arrow as blood gurgled from his throat.

  


The third came and landed in a barrel, igniting it. As Brienne realized what fire and wine together could do, Barristan suddenly yelled.

  


“From the water! We’re under attack!”

  


The explosion from the barrel knocked Brienne and everyone close by to the floor, including Daenerys. Brienne stared in disbelief as the sky lit up like a summer’s day from the flaming arrows coming for them. She staggered to her feet, screams in her ears, chaos rocking and rumbling throughout the ship as everyone scrambled to either retaliate or run for cover. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Barristan leading the charge of Unsullied to the other end of the ship, shields up. The blue peeking from between their legs told Daenerys was under the makeshift roof of steel.

  


Brienne got to her feet and ducked behind more barrels as an arrow narrowly missed her head. She crawled through trampling boots, barely noticing the bodies falling over her until someone slammed a heavy foot on her hand. As she roared in pain, the swift slash of a blade rippled in black and red came for her.

  


_Goodwin._

Brienne rolled, shoving barrels at him as he charged with a shout. Through the crush of people she grabbed whatever body was close by, using them as shields for his thrusts and slices. Thought she saw Sorelle climbing into the ship, as well as Larosh. She tripped, landing hard on her side on a crate before slamming to the floor. As pain exploded from her side, Goodwin seized Oathkeeper’s hilt in both hands and got ready to stab her.

  


Groaning, Brienne grabbed a sword from the dead body, cutting it through the air just in time.

The force of her swing sent Goodwin crashing against the wall. She leaped to her feet and charged.

  


As more arrows flew and fire spread throughout the ship, Brienne was relentless in her pursuit of Goodwin. His movements were lithe despite his age, dodging her attacks and slipping between tight spaces.

  


And as good he was at retreating, so was he in advancing. He grinned coldly at her as he stood over the edge before suddenly bending and grabbing something from below. She froze as he dragged a shouting Dyrna.

  


“Ser Brienne!” She struggled from his hold. “Unhand me, you bastard!”

  


“It seems your handmaidens mean to rescue you,” he remarked before yanking Dyrna’s hair and baring the curve of her throat.

  


“No!” But Brienne’s scream was useless from Oathkeeper splitting the handmaiden’s head from her throat.

  


“Your pathetic amphibious force will die here and will be food for sharks by daybreak.” Goodwin declared, tossing Dyrna’s head into the water. Her body was still kneeling. He kicked it into the water too. “And I intend to sip the blood and wine of this carnage in honor of you and your bastard’s deaths.”

  


Her soldiers. For the first time since the attack began, Brienne noticed that few of them were engaged in swordfights or fists with Dothraki, Unsullied and sellsword. A few flaming arrows continued to arc in the sky. She looked at the dead again, seeing that there more of her soldiers than the enemy.

  


Their blood flooded the ship.

  


“You’ll never have that pleasure.”

  


Goodwin laughed at her words before slashing at her swiftly, leaving her very little time to avert her head. Still he left his mark. She slapped a hand over the sting and fire of blood pouring from the cut on her cheek and towards her neck. Circling her, laughing some more, he attacked again.

  


She grunted and fought back with everything. With everything of the little she had. She had already lost. There was nothing to live for. But there was still that one thing she could do. What she must do.

  


As she deflected one of his lightning-fast thrusts, an arrow flew and buried in the flesh of her thigh.

  


Agony.

  


She roared.

  


To pull it out meant more pain and blood. Blood she couldn’t lose, not now. The Stranger was close. She intended to bring a guest. Mustering what will and strength she could still scrape, she shot to her feet and slashed at Goodwin as he came for her again.

  


It ripped through the gap between his armor and breeches, sawing through the cloth of his coat and the skin holding the meat and blood of him together. Wide blue eyes mirroring her own disbelief stared at her. Panting, she could only watch as Goodwin staggered and fell against the wall, smearing blood on it. As he turned, she saw the long tangled ribbons of his entrails spilling from the open flesh.

  


He was as good as dead but it wasn’t enough. As the knight heaved and stubbornly clung to life, the fire in his blue eyes still bright, she grabbed the arrow from her thigh. Her scream was long and sharp as the arrowhead sliced back into the trail it made through muscle and flesh before sliding out. Blood gushed from the hole as she stabbed him right in the eye with the arrow.

  


Stillness seized his body and Oathkeeper fell from his hand. Brienne picked it up. Bloody from the base down to the tip, it felt heavier. But she gripped it, finding some comfort in the familiar carved details of the lion’s mane. She took Goodwin’s sword belt, discarding his other sword. She was clumsy belting it around her waist because her left hand still hurt from his boot. Some fingers were probably broken.

  


But she had Oathkeeper back, she thought, securing it at her waist. She leaned against the edge of the ship, hearing the blood from her thigh plopping loudly on the floor. She was also alive.

  


Panting, her breath shallow, sharp wheezes from the pain radiating from her side and the growing pain of her wound in the thigh, she looked at the dead around her. Dothraki. Sellsword. A couple of Unsullied. _Her soldiers._ She recognized Sorelle’s body lying facedown in a pool of blood. Cassius was seated in death, the sword in his throat keeping him pinned and upright against the wall.

  


Yet Barristan was not among the dead. Even Tyrion Lannister. Where did Daenerys’ forces go? Where was she?

  


The answer came from above. A scream that promised death. Brienne looked up and a dragon opened its mouth, giving her a glimpse of darkness and hell before filling her world with fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the loooong wait! If you're still reading this, I'm so grateful.


	15. Daenerys III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Soldiers are never innocent. We had no choice!”  
> “The Houses here swore themselves to me without any bloodshed. I the queen. Is it too much to ask for the people who fight in my name to do the same?”  
> “Today you didn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO!
> 
> So. I have an update! So soon, right? HAHAHAHA.
> 
> Huge, huge thanks to catherineflowers for hand-holding, cheering me on, and just being all sunshine and rainbows despite everything. I will never stop being so happy and thankful she's my bestie! 
> 
> Shoutout to kristilove too! She won't have to wait too long this time! She never nags me, that's how kind she is, but she does make me work! Hahahaha! She and Cathy do! 
> 
> *******  
> Look out for a couple of characters from Brienne's POV that appears here. No, not Dany, Barristan and Missandei. One I named in her POV, the other I didn't. That's your clue!

Voices upon voices had warned her. An alliance with Brienne of Tarth had as much value as sand. Better for Daenerys to take the isle and with it the rest of the Stormlands. The rest of Westeros would then fall in her hands.

But benevolence. Mercy. Tenets Daenerys wished to live by once regaining the seven kingdoms taken from her. Astapor, Yunkai and Mereen called for fire and blood. Westeros was home. She had no wish to bloody the land, let alone incite fear among the common folk. Madness and cruelty more than the Kingslayer’s sword had sealed her father’s fate and with it her family. She would retake the kingdoms but with diplomacy. She would be respected. Loved. Not feared.

She had not been prepared for despair.

In her young life she had laid eyes on much waste and hopelessness, had seen the ugliness men were capable of. She never thought that someone, a woman at that, could be so deprived, so lacking in so much pleasantness and sweetness of looks until Brienne of Tarth stood before her.

Daenerys didn’t know which was harder to believe: that a woman could be so unfortunate-looking or that they shared blood. Seeing the Targaryen features were no hardship: pale hair that in the night, in a certain light, could be silver yet with the texture of straw rather than silk, skin so light, so fair, but strangely ruddy and marked with dots and splotches as countless as stars in the sky.

What she saw that was truer than anything was the watery gleam of her brilliant blue eyes as her voice broke in continuing the sentence: “My son. _He’s dead_.”

Tears were imminent. Daenerys braced herself from Brienne’s harsh, rough features getting more so should she cry, yet also awed at the remarkable blue of her eyes brighter and more vivid than a fistful of sapphires. It had been at the tip of her tongue to vow that her son would be unharmed when a flaming arrow flew between them before landing in Dakho’s chest.

She knew what that flaming arrow meant. But it took two more soldiers before Barristan himself found the words for the growing horror. “We’re under attack!”

The explosion of a wine barrel struck by a flaming arrow knocked Daenerys to her knees. As she blinked from shock, a charge led by Grey Worm came for her, shields up. He pulled her to her feet and the rest of the Unsullied quickly flanked her, protecting her head with their shields, her body with their bodies.

“Take the queen back to the ships in the cove!” Barristan was yelling as more explosions rocked the ship. Daenerys tried to see between the gaps of bodies but only made out more fire, heard the clash of steel.

“No.” It was Daario. “The attack comes from the water. We can’t risk her becoming a hostage.”

Barely had he finished speaking when she heard Drogon’s earth-shaking scream. The Unsullied moved her to the direction of the sound, guiding her to the edge of the ship. Barristan and Daario held their shields over her as she leaped off and landed on the beast’s hot scaly back. She quickly grasped one of the spikes protruding from his spine.

“Sovetes,” she whispered.

Drogon’s scream threatened to split the top of her skull from the rest of it before obeying her command. Tremors rocked his body as he took to the air on leathery wings. As she clung, Viserion and Rhaegal did her bidding too, their smaller bodies rising like gigantic, fire-breathing ships in the sea of darkness. It didn’t take long to find herself high in the sky and breathing ice into her lungs.

Drogon was quick to ascend but the two dragons, she saw, lingered longer a little below. Flaming arrows continued to fly looking like dying comets. What little light they offered showed a few bodies in the water, some swimming for her ships, some dead.

The dead.

She could still fix this. Become a queen through benevolence rather than inciting chaos. “Let’s go back,” she spoke in Valyrian. Drogon growled, doing a full turn before heading for below. Rhaegal and Viserion were faster.

As soon as the thick fog cleared and revealed the small ring of her ships and the odd little rafts from which the arrows came from, her dragons unleashed their true might.

Perhaps it was the bodies. The screams. The smell of blood in the air—it was so thick that even her nose picked it up. She could taste it. Before realizing the possible consequences of it, Viserion acted first.

“No!” She shouted as he unleashed a wall of fire so brilliant the night reeled back. Fire took the ship she had been on in a single blast. Wood turned to black, jagged pieces of ruin writhing before plunging into the sea.

And then Rhaegal joined his brother.

Still gripped by the horror of her beasts gone rogue, she nearly slipped and fell into the sea as Drogon let out a roar that shook all of sky and the seven kingdoms. He swooped straight down towards the burning ships. She clung on one every spike and scale with her arms and thighs.

“Stop!” But her shout was drowned out by their growls. Three plumes of fire lit the night and finished off everyone in the water. She pulled at the spikes as if they were reins on a horse. “Stop at once!”

But Drogon continued to roar and unleash fire. Just when she managed to secure herself he moved his body side to side. It seemed the earth under her was seized by tremors so violent that threatened to break her spine. Screams from all three dragons cleaved into her ears and brain.

After what felt like an eternity, their screams stopped. Daenerys, who didn’t realize her eyes had shut, opened them. Smoke, embers, and a gray sun filled her vision.

She was still trying to make sense of this new world when Drogon took a sharp turn to the side. Towards Tarth itself.

His brothers followed him. Wind and the heavy beat of wings were all she heard.

And just when she thought there was calm at last, the dragons rained fire on the land.

How long the devastation lasted she had no idea. Her voice had been reduced to croaks after screaming so much for the dragons to stop.

_There had been so much fire._

Her face, her skin, was as hot as in that bath she’d taken another lifetime ago, when Viserys ordered her into the steaming pool to prepare herself for Drogo. She looked at her hands. Gray. Bloody. She fisted the sand under her. Gritty rather than fine. It dug like glass.

“I found her. She’s here! Your grace!”

Heavy footsteps stormed on the sand until someone loomed over her. She stared at the figure. Bright and white like a star, a blast of light in this strange land of icy gray water and sky of dark charcoal.

“Your grace.” Barristan got down on one knee and peered at her. She continued scooping sand and watching it fall between her fingers. “Daenerys.”

His gentle tone got her attention. His white hair and beard were gray from the smoke and his cheeks coated in dark dust. He seemed relieved but also worried. “Are you hurt, your grace? Did you fall?”

She rested her palm on the sand. Trying to think. Her mind was muddled with smoke and terror still. “I-I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Staring at her palms, she sighed. “I don’t know where my children are.”

“In the sky, your grace.” He continued speaking gently. “See for yourself.”

He spoke true though she had to squint. From afar they seemed to be birds. Graceful, harmless creatures of flight. As Daario reached them with the others, she said, “It’s really dark here.” She stared at her arm. One by one the tiny hairs there stood. Little dots spread across it.

“Winter, your grace.” Barristan unbuckled his cloak and swept it around her narrow shoulders.

“I tried to stop them,” she whispered. “I-I thought—they—”

She remembered Drogon flying low enough for her to see the cluster of what appeared to be stone houses. Houses meant people. And these houses were no more in one blast of fire.

“They attacked no one during our show of strength before those Houses. No one. Not even one puff of smoke. I don’t understand. They—” she looked around. Smoke was only beginning to clear. She smelled ice and fire. “I-I did this.”

“Hush, your grace. May I see your hands?” She spread her fingers, seeing for the first time the torn skin and cuts, the sand-speckled surface. Barristan took scooped one in his hand and with the fingers of the other plucked off the clinging sands.

“What’s going on with her?” Daario demanded upon arriving. “Her hands?”

“She needs a healer.” Barristan replied as Daario reached for the flask on his belt. The water was cool but Daenerys hissed and snatched her hands back.

“Your grace?” Barristan asked as she clasped her hands to her heart.

She shook her head vehemently. A healer. No. The last time she had trusted one took all she held dear in the world. Her eyes drifted to the sky. No stars. No sun. Only her dragons so very far away.

The pain digging in her womb drew her eyes there with a gasp. Daario and Barristan glanced at each other then Daario picked her up.

“We’re taking her to the castle,” he declared.

“I feel so strange.” Her voice seemed not her own. The movement of her arms wrapping around his neck felt like the bidding of another. “Something has taken over the warmth in me.”

“You’re cold, your grace,” Barristan said, wrapping every fold of the cloak around her. As they walked to the horses, he continued, “It’s the winter air. The feel and taste of it is nothing any of us know. Even I have only read of it, heard it from tales. The east has always been to warm for it.” He gestured around them, at the smoke, the coarse sand, the towering cliffs looking down on them. “Tarth being south gets some daylight but not much. Not for long, by the looks of it. Perhaps some frost. But the north would be blanketed in snow. It won’t see light for as long as winter lasts.”

Daario put her on a horse. This was familiar. The firm strong muscles under a fine gleaming coat. The comfort of a saddle. But the hairs of its mane was cool and stiff. She drew the cloak tighter around her body while Daario climbed up on the horse next to hers. Barristan took the horse in front. Grey Worm and the rest of the Unsullied followed on foot.

The reins scraped the raw, open wound of her palms. It didn’t take long for them to be slick with her blood. She tightened her hold. Above came the screech of her dragons.

They could smell her. Her blood.

They were not close enough to feel the swoop of their wings or for the part of the sky to darken over them. But she felt them—their hunger, their curiosity of this new land. Even the very beat of their hearts. Fast. With anticipation.

Their eyes saw something she couldn’t, truly. Wherever she looked was bare gray land wrapped in smoke. Gnarled trees. Barristan was speaking, pointing out the topography but in a voice that conveyed some uncertainty, perhaps even dismay. She listened with half an ear as he spoke about olive trees that used to grow, here. She sniffed. The air smelled too much of smoke. Salt.

Death.

 _At my hands._ Even when she had not given the command, it was her dragons who had destroyed this land that was barely clinging to life in the first place.

Everywhere in the continent of Essos, except for barren harsh landscapes such as the Red Waste, colors burst from the ground and the sky. Daylight was bronzed, golden. Wide-leafed ferns grew wildly and flowers bloomed year-round. The air smelled of herbs.

Tarth was everything she had never seen in Essos. Desolate. Infinite sand and salt rather than possibilities. Ruins, she thought, seeing pillars of smoke ahead, rather than hope.

“Stop.” Raising her voice drew a hacking cough from her. She pulled at the reins and climbed down. Daario held her horse as she walked forward. Barristan swung down form his horse and followed her. 

“I was here,” she said. Embers and smoke rose from the heaps of what used to be houses of stone. As the strange pain in her womb intensified, she heard Drogo’s voice. _I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses._

She remembered how tiny they had looked from the sky. Like infant’s toys. Because they had been grouped close together, she guessed they were communities.

As she heard Drogo’s voice saying those exact words over and over again, so did the memory of her own screams. Screams at the dragons to stop. There were people inside. _They were innocent_. She slaughtered slave masters, not the common folk.

The fires her dragons had unleashed on the rooftops had annihilated the communities instantly. No one person peeked from a window or even slipped through the door. They were still asleep when their bodies turned to ash.

Just like then, as she and her children returned to the clouds, she found no comfort that the people felt no pain.

It was the last thing she could remember before the Barristan had found her. She glanced at him, seeing that he looked both grim and confused.

“I did this.”

He looked at her. “You-you gave the command, your grace?”

“I tried. I tried to stop them.” She stared at the devastation again. The smell of charred flesh was akin to a roast in a feast but instead of whetting her appetite, her stomach turned. Without warning, she felt something bitter well up and race for her throat. She ran behind some trees devoid of leaves, some rocks. She heaved and groaned before expelling the foul sludge from her stomach.

Barristan’s concern was now mixed with fear. Daenerys wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

“He did that, your grace. I’m sure of it. We shouldn’t have trusted him. Your father learned the hard way of trusting anyone from that treacherous House.”

“Who do you speak of? What do you think is happening to me?”

“That imp.” Barristan looked disgusted. “Was he not the one to persuade you to seek an alliance with Lady Brienne rather than taking Tarth?”

“No, as a matter of fact. Not him, and no one. I am queen, ser. I will listen but whatever choice I make is my decision, not the product of pretty words and smooth arguments.”

While they were speaking, a sharp rustling drew her eyes to the ground. She turned and saw a pig, most of it burned black. Fat and blood had burst and oozed from blisters. What sounds it made were pathetic squeaks of pain. Its fat legs jerked. Little life remained in it but a long death was expected. 

“With your permission, your grace,” Barristan said, reaching in his belt for one of the blades there. She shook her head and opened her hand. It released the little pool of blood to the ground.

“I did this.” She whispered. “No matter how much I wanted none of this destruction it was my dragons. This land was sentenced to even more pain when it was already condemned. Hand me the dagger.”

Barristan hesitated.

The pig was making strangled little squeals.

“I take no pleasure in torture, ser.”

“Then let me do it, your grace.”

“No. The dagger. Now.”

So the dagger was placed in her hand. It was warm. Daenerys looked at the pig once more before kneeling down. Holding the weapon in both hands and seeing her blood wet the animal and the ground, she plunged it sure in its neck. Blood spurted from the wound to her face. Some fell between her parted lips and wet her tongue. It tasted of earth and steel.

She rose to her full height and returned the blade to Barristan. “Find whoever has survived and bring them to the castle. Be it man or woman or child. Give them our provisions.”

“At once, your grace.”

“Grey Worm will take the rest of the men with him now to accompany you,” she continued as they walked back to the horses. Daario was still holding her horse for her. To him, she said, “I shall spend the night in Evenfall Hall.”

He inclined his head. “As wish.”

“Protect her with your life,” Barristan told him before they left.

Alone and away from her forces, they rode to the castle. Daario said nothing to her the entire way and she was grateful. She had to see what she’d done. Take in every mistake and if need be, stop for every dead found along the way.

But the pig was the only one near death found. Evenfall Hall soon loomed over them, white and magnificent but scarred from the breath of her dragons. They continued to fly overhead trailing after her. The Unsullied already stationed at the gates swept the tall wooden doors open to let her in.

At the courtyard Dothraki and a small group of women headed by Missandei waited for them. “Khaleesi,” she said, rushing to Dany. While a Dothraki steadied her horse, she swung off it and hit the ground, only to stumble. Missandei was quick to steady her.

Instead of letting the other woman go, Daenerys leaned heavily against her.

“We thought—” But Missandei didn’t finish. Instead she held Daenerys to her chest. “Your hands, khaleesi,” she whispered, taking one. Touched the drying blood on her cheek. 

“I tried to stop them.”

Missandei nodded, understanding who she meant. “You’re safe. We will take care of you.”

Daenerys stepped out of her arms and Daario was immediately at her side. “Your grace, take my arm if you wish.”

“I may be weakened and scarred from my choices but I will take the first steps of getting back what’s mine with my own two feet. Just as I will walk the halls of this castle.”

Whereas the Great Pyramid of Meereen reached for the sky and watched over not only the city but beyond, Evenfall Hall was not even half as tall or even half it size. It stood at the tallest point of Tarth but, as she saw once stepping inside, looked out into the sea and barren fields. While gauzy curtains hung from the enormous windows of her previous windows, she saw heavy, faded drapes framing the glass of the windows.

The chandeliers were of dark, unadorned steel rather than the intricate, gleaming goldwork she had come to know. The hallway, though wide and could accommodate six horses abreast, was a narrow space.

Inside the pyramid, with its walls lavished with only the richest, most sumptuous of tapestries, the light was golden even in the darkest hours of the night. Evenfall Hall was as desolate and dark as it was outside, with tapestries faded and drooping at the corners. Daenerys gathered the cloak closer around her shoulders. The cold wouldn’t go away too, not even within the castle’s thick marble walls.

They entered another hallway, this one filled with paintings of the Lady Brienne’s ancestors. Missandei flushed. “I apologize, khaleesi. They would be removed by first light tomorrow.”

Daenerys paused in front of the painting of a man who had eyes as blue as Brienne’s. “The paintings are not so numerous that it would take plenty of time to remove them. What happened?”

Missandei looked troubled and glanced at Daario. He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid there are lot of bodies to bury first. And blood to clean.”

“Do you mean to tell me there was bloodshed?” Daenerys demanded, her surprise numbing the pain in her throat from her raised voice. When neither of her companions spoke, she continued, “I agreed to the alliance with the Lady Brienne only upon peaceful terms. Goodwin swore to us she would come willingly.”

 _“Your men killed my soldiers. Servants. Women. Innocents. Many defenseless.”_ Now Daenerys understood the hatred and defeat in Brienne’s eyes. She stared at Daario, waiting for him to respond. When nothing came, she turned to Missandei.

“Leave us.” Her handmaid hesitated but obeyed. Alone with Daaerio, she demanded, “Tell me the truth. What happened.”

“The reason there was hardly you could call a force that came here for her was because he swore she would come to us. He told us everything. The time. Where she will be. What he will do. We did our end. I swear to you.”

“At what point did getting her had to cover murder?”

“He had thought the castle would be asleep and realized too late that another group of soldiers trained only by her was still around.” He looked away before finding his eyes back on her. “We did what we had to do.”

“Murder,” she pointed out. “She said they were defenseless. Innocent.”

“Soldiers are never innocent. We had no choice!”

“The Houses here swore themselves to me without any bloodshed. I the queen. Is it too much to ask for the people who fight in my name to do the same?”

“Today you didn’t.”

Daenerys flinched as if struck while Daario tried to reach for her. “Forgive me. Your grace—”

“I am sickened by what my dragons did. Through no fault of my own they’re still my dragons. But I can’t say the same for the men who swore to serve and fight in my name. If I should still have them fight under my banners.” 

“Will you make an example of us then? Hang us?”

“You forget what my dragons can do.”

The implication of her words was quick to sink in him. She almost smirked. “Blood is not how I rule and I wish to say true to that. Do not make me change my mind. Where are they? The dead?”

“Your grace—”

“Where. Are. They.”

“Some have been buried already.”

“Where? In some plot in the ground like a stray animal? Bring them to me. You have an hour to gather them all in the great hall, laid out in a manner for me to give them respect. You butchered them like animals but I will not have them sent to the nightlands or whatever heaven they believe without honor.” 

“Your grace. It will be done.”

Missandei stood at a discreet enough distance to know their conversation had ended. She was back at Daenerys’ side without being summoned. Together they left the hall of portraits, crossed into more hallways before climbing up a wide sweeping staircase. Unsullied already stood guard outside the doors of her chambers.

Cold and dark, she thought the chambers very much like a tomb scattered with thick carpets and fur blankets. No arched windows to allow for much sunlight to stream in, nor even a doorway leading to a balcony where plants and flowers bloomed. Only more faded tapestries. A massive bed canopied in faded blue silk. Though the rest of the furniture showed intricate craftsmanship, they were old.

As Missandei removed Daenery’s grimy clothes, Nyri and two other handmaidens filled a tub with steaming water and prepared her soaps and scented oils. Daenerys didn’t take long in the bath, partly because of what she needed done immediately and also because the hot water couldn’t banish the chill that clung to her bones.

“I have never wished for violence,” she murmured as Missandei treated the cuts on her palms a short while later. Nyri was brushing her hair. The three women were by the fire, Daenerys on an embroidered bench that had once been a brilliant blue velvet with gold stitching.

“I wanted the Lady. . .no, Ser Brienne,” she continued, remembering, “as my ally. I wished to take back what was taken from me peacefully. I knew she would bring little to none with the alliance. But if she saw me. . .if she got to know how I am as queen. . .I wanted her support.”

“Khaleesi, may I speak frankly?” Missandei asked, binding her palm with a clean strip of linen.

“I expect no less.”

“Your intention is peace but getting the seven kingdoms back will never be peaceful. You wished for the lady to see and know you so she will swear her sword and life to you but. . .what about her side, khaleesi?”

“I don’t catch your meaning.”

“It takes more than knowing you to gain an ally. Perhaps you could try seeing this from her side as well. She is sworn to another queen. To support you she would not just be committing treason, khaleesi. All of the Stormlands will. And Nyri. . .” Missandei glanced at the other handmaiden.

“What do you know?” Daenerys asked her.

Nyri looked troubled. “Khaleesi, Cersei punished the Houses that rose against hers and the people who fought under their banners by executing the eldest son. It is quite known throughout the kingdoms that the Lady Brienne’s son was only spared because Jaime Lannister intervened.”

There it was again. The pain in her womb.

“It was not enough for her, khaleesi. She demanded reparations. Disarmament. For the future sons of these Houses be fostered by everyone that supported the Lannisters. People tell me the fostering is simply another word for keeping the boys’ families in line. That the boys are effectively hostages. One misstep by anyone in their families and these boys would be executed at Cersei’s orders.”

“So she holds them by the throat. But shouldn’t people like the Lady or Ser Brienne wish to go against Cersei once given the chance? I gave my word. It was one of the terms that Goodwin demanded. Her son would be safe.”

“But now that she is gone, khaleesi?” Missandei asked.

“I will not let an innocent pay with his life for the choices his parent made. It’s one of the many differences between me and Cersei. I promise liberty. Benevolence.”

But the thirty-eight bodies laid out in the great hall were hardly an example of the benevolence she wished to uphold, she saw later while standing at the entrance of the great hall. Each of the dead had been carefully placed on the floor, a sheet drawn to their shoulders.

An Unsullied wielding a torch, one of the men who had chosen to remain in Westeros and continue observing and giving reports on Tarth, approached her. He had grown taller now, but not much taller than her. But his body was strong and muscled from his time as a baker’s assistant and as one of Brienne’s amphibious forces.

“Larosh,” she murmured, remembering his name. She knew every name that had volunteered to be sent to this side of the world.

He bowed. “Khaleesi.”

“Do you know them? Their names? What they were like. . .alive?”

“I do, khaleesi.”

She nodded. “Let us begin.”

The first body was a woman. Her hair was bright auburn and gathered in braids atop of her head. She was young and fair.

“Her name was Santi. She was handmaiden to Ser Brienne before invited to join our special troops. She was. . .she was unbeatable with the bow and arrow, khaleesi. She was also kind. Brave. She protected Ser Brienne as much as she could from Lord Humfrey.”

“Are the rumors true, then? About. . .about the abuse?”

“I never saw for myself, khaleesi. But it was hardly a secret in Tarth.”

They moved to the next, a man of Ser Barristan’s age by the looks of him. Even in death and with blood on his white hair, he seemed at peace. But his wounds. Daenerys got down on knee and nudged the blanket down.

His head was only attached to his body by the skin on the side of his neck. Only one weapon could do this.

“Tell me,” she whispered. She tried to wipe the blood from his hair with her sleeve. But it was already matted. It was there to stay.

“Maester Orlyn, khaleesi.” Larosh removed his helmet and bowed his head. “A good man. One of the few the world had until last night.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she agreed. She gazed at the old man, not knowing what else to think besides being undeserving of his forgiveness. Then she drew the blanket over his face and stood up. Larosh put his helmet back on and led her to the next body.

After knowing each by name, she gave the order to have them brought to individual pyres at the beach. Daario led the men into lighting them up.

The fires burned through the night, lighting up Tarth and the sky. Daenerys scrambled her mind for a god to pray to, some deity to guide them into the unknown. No name, not even a name came to mind. Instead, when she cast her eyes heavenward all she saw were dragons.

Drogon. Viserion. Rhaegal. Circling this little isle. Keeping watch. Waiting.

Daenerys looked at the pyres a final time. What happened had happened. If she wished to once again rule the seven kingdoms, she couldn’t let regret shape her next choices. Many more will die and many will not have to.

“Summon the lords of the Stormlands sworn to me and ring the bells,” she told Barristan. “Let the people know I’m here. Let Cersei know what I’ve done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> If you guessed Dany was traumatized, you got that right. One of the many things that troubled me about dragons in the later seasons of the show was they became nothing more than giant, fire-breathing puppies. Whatever happened to dragons that burned a child? I mean, I get that the belief is if you're Targaryen you can ride a dragon or if you're with a Targaryen you can ride one but I wish the show focused more how dragons are, you know, fucking beasts. They're the medieval equivalent of nuclear weapons. 
> 
> So if you have nuclear weapons, you'd be victorious, right? 
> 
> In this POV, I thought to examine the consequences of owning such weapons. Dragons are fucking dragons. You can teach a dog to sit, play dead. You can teach your cat to poop in the toilet and flush it. Dragons, on the other hand, you can't ever, ever control. Sure, Dany could command them to fly, to burn stuff, etc., but when things are chaotic, believe me, all that goes to shit. 
> 
> I'm not saying Dany has no idea how destructive her dragons are. She does. But in realizing that she has no control over dragons when things go to shit, I want her to see as well the repercussions of it. How they affect her. Astapor and Meereen are cakewalk compared to conquering Westeros. She also believes that by taking back the seven kingdoms she's liberating people--but from what exactly? Cersei? Is Cersei responsible for bringing on winter? For famine? Exactly what is Dany's understanding of liberty?
> 
> And why should the people trust her? Cersei isn't the best ruler at all. But between a murderous tyrant and a stranger whose family is known for going mad, violent and now with dragons, who will you trust? 
> 
> I also want to show that in realizing that conquering Westeros is nothing at all like conquering Meereen, Dany's peaceful and benevolent intentions will not hold up. Conquering is just a macho term for colonization and that's exactly what she intends to do. Seizing lands and convincing people to trust you can never be done without bloodshed.


	16. Jaime V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being far from Cersei kept her away from his dreams on most nights, and Brienne’s kisses had slain any desire he felt for his sister’s mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! Finally!
> 
> I was hoping to post this during the weekend but I was too busy celebrating still getting all the results of my exams. Dissertation writing is the next step! Thank you so much for your patience if you're still reading this.
> 
> A shoutout to my bestie Cathy. Always giving sound advice I'm often too chicken or too unsure to take but more often than not, I end up doing what she suggested! Except for this time! Hahahaha! You guys will see why!

After shutting the door, Jaime leaned against it. For the first time in ages he felt good about himself. Really good. It was the right thing to do, bestowing honor in one ignored for so long.

For all his certainty, however, his body was trembling.

The cold coming from the sea despite the closed windows had become familiar and was almost a comfort now. If he stayed any longer, a day without that chill would be unimaginable—as well as the brine that clung to his tongue all day and caused his lips to crack.

He had always hated the cold. Winterfell had been hell for him long before setting foot on it. The moon-long journey meant he couldn’t fuck, let alone fondle Cersei. When they finally managed to steal away, the Stark boy caught them.

If he could pinpoint a moment in time where the end began, it was that day. While he still had Cersei to hold afterward, those days were numbered. If only he had known. If a seer had come upon and warned of their doom, perhaps things would be different.

He would not have left her side, for one. The red of his rage over Catelyn Stark’s taking of Tyrion wouldn’t have driven him to confront Ned Stark in the streets and execute the latter’s guards. He wouldn’t have been forced to join the Lannister host. Never would have faced forces led by that useless Renly Baratheon and Robb Stark.

Brienne would never have captured him.

That Jaime Lannister, the one who did things out of love for Cersei without question, was dead. Jaime was certain. For why else would the thought of never having crossed paths with Brienne make him so afraid? Why, he thought, turning to look at her, if that man still existed, did he think of nothing about getting on his knees and begging her to let him stay?

Brienne must have awakened at some point during his quick conference outside. Sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes, she looked quite sweet. Innocent, perhaps for always in his eyes, he thought, his eyes dropping to her breasts. The cold pinched her puffy nipples into taut points.

She dropped her hands and blinked at him. One side of her face was lined from the creases of the pillows. Her hair was a tangled spill of straw and wheat on her wide shoulders.

She looked nothing at all like he thought he would ever have, but she was everything he wanted. Everything he wanted and didn’t deserve. And in perhaps a cruel twist in some joke only the gods understood, she wanted him too.

He pushed the bar across the door. As he headed back to bed and undid his robe, she said, “Today.”

No question. Not accusation. Not even reproach. Just a statement of a painful fact. He paused before tossing the robe on a chair then nodded.

She moved across the bed until her cool hands were on him. He let her turn him, looking down at her freckled face. Her hair was rough under his fingers. She clutched at his hand. Swollen lips and chin trembled.

Then a tear fell from her eyes.

“Ask me,” he whispered, brushing it away. Instead she shook her head and kissed his palm deeply. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Brienne.”

She shook her head as her chin wobbled. With a gasp, she threw her arms around his waist. Her tears wetted his stomach and cock.

“I can’t,” she whimpered. He hugged her back too, hands sliding into her hair, the cool span of her back. “I shouldn’t.”

“I know.” He swiped a hand across his eyes too. “I just wish—”

“What?” She pulled away to look at him. She was red and uglier and more dear to him. He thumbed away her tears, caressed her lips.

He shook his head. It was better to leave it unsaid. Less painful for them both.

But she was insistent. “Jaime. _Please_.” 

When she said his name, in that graveled voice so raw with want, he couldn’t resist her. It was this moment, he realized, that she could do it. Do the very thing he knew very well he couldn’t ask her to do. He smoothed the hair from her face, moved by the adoration and desperation in her eyes.

“Brienne—” he started to say. _Ask me. Ask me to stay._

Instead, he took hold of his cock. Hard, it was heavier to the touch. He groaned rubbing the foreskin on his cock before pushing it back to reveal the swollen head. Watching her watching him made the column of warm flesh in his palm harder. There was no slyness in her stare. Just curiosity. Want.

Love.

His breath unsteady, he rubbed the tip on her nipple until it reddened and she moaned. Splotches the color of rose, crimson and scarlet slowly spread from her face all the way to her chest, where he brushed the head on her other nipple. He traced it up the long line of her throat, drawing her body in to a soft arch and from her lips a soft little sigh.

He approached her lips, heart hammering fast and heavy in his chest with anticipation. He already knew how her thick, chapped lips felt. He knew that should he find himself in the darkest and coldest of hells, the warmth of her mouth would guide him out of them.

Except for a few times since his arrival and that terrible night when storms sent mountains crashing on the houses of common folk, he had been hesitant asking for the pleasure of her mouth. Being far from Cersei kept her away from his dreams on most nights, and Brienne’s kisses had slain any desire he felt for his sister’s mouth.

But the black terror in Taena’s eyes haunted him in sleep and even when awake. He had never seen anything so hopeless, nor felt such self-loathing when she mouthed him at Cersei’s command. Her tears had not deterred him from pleasure. Her fear made her desperate to please and she had sucked him with all power she could muster. There was no passion in her suctions and licks and yet—yet—

He didn’t just feel like an animal that day. He had felt the lowest of the low afterward, when he was alone in his chambers and shivering from the delight and pleasure Cersei had forced on him. So sickened knowing this side of himself that he threw up in the chamber pot until it overflowed.

Brienne. He almost breathed her name while circling the plump head of his cock on her half-open lips. That day in the mountains had been a nightmare come to life but she’d given him a glimpse of light. When she had loved him with her mouth as the world darkened, he had feared Cersei would take hold of his mind. That in the darkness, a mouth was just like any other and it mattered not whether it was Brienne’s or Cersei’s.

But neither darkness, nor Cersei, had impinged on the heavenly glove of Brienne’s mouth. He had known it was her every time she swiped her tongue across the head, dragged it up and down his shaft. Knew it was her hands guiding the foreskin and squeezing his balls. The very sound of her gasp and whimper as she swallowed his seed.

As he groaned from the rough surface of her lips on the sensitive tip of his cock, she put her hand over his. Looked at him. Her tongue flicking out was permission and also desire.

“Yes,” he whispered, letting go to thread his fingers through her hair. _“Please.”_

She looked surprised. Questioning. She knew what he really wanted to ask. And he knew at that moment that if he had, she wouldn’t have refused him anymore.

But if she had asked it was because he’d manipulated her. He refused to toy with her. Never with her.

“Jaime?”

“Yes. Kiss me.”

She opened her mouth, breath gusting out. _Summer._ Brilliant sun rendering fields golden. Warmth. He welcomed what he thought was just probably an imaginary trickle of sweat on his back. 

Her mouth engulfed him. He fell into paradise.

He breathed and groaned through her wet, oral ministrations, accompanied by the calloused touch of her hands on his balls, his thighs, his ass. There was little grace to her kisses but she was eager and didn’t deprive him of her searing sapphire gaze.

And by the gods, she was fucking breathtaking taking all of him in her mouth. All of him. Tipping her head back and moaning as his cockhead bumped and pressed her throat. His eyes widened before squeezing shut. _“Brienne. Brienne. Brienne.”_

Her mouth seemed to slide forever up and down his cock before mouthing his balls. He gripped her head, opening his eyes to see, to watch. Her breath was watery and she was slobbering but he was in seven heavens. Probably beyond seven heavens.

And when she mouthed his cock again—

“Ah—I’m—I’m close—” he gasped, gripping her shoulders.

Rather than pulling away, she rubbed his foreskin roughly. He shouted from the sensation and his release.

She didn’t catch all of his seed—some plopped on the floor, squirted on her shoulder. Her mouth and hand milked him as if to drain him and he was more than happy to give and give and give. The Warrior ceased to be his god.

_“Brienne.”_

Drinking the last of him, she finally pulled away. Her face was a riot of reds and pinks, and her mouth swollen to twice its size. He grabbed her by the chin and bent to kiss her. She gasped, stiffening, but he was determined. Relentless. He gripped her to his chest, imprisoned her face in his hand as he tasted himself from her tongue. When he pulled away, he couldn’t help but smirk at her disbelieving, wide-eyed stare.

“Come on, wench. How many times did you kiss me right after I licked your cunt?”

She squawked and looked conflicted between laughing and frowning. But the sparkle in her eyes told she wasn’t disgusted. Bopping his nose gently with hers, he murmured, “Admit it. Even in how we taste, we’re very, very good.”

Her face burned as she finally gave in to a soft chuckle. “It’s your pretty cock that makes you taste so good.”

“This thing?” He asked innocently, glancing between his thighs.

Suddenly, she threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. It was unlike the rough way he’d kissed her. She was tender. Almost shy. Still, he could feel his knees buckling.

They fell back on the bed, him on top of her. As she caressed his hair and kissed his clavicles, his cheeks, he palmed her breasts. She cooed. He caressed the long line of her waist, the wide span of her hip before flattening his hand on her cunt. She was warm. Plump. And promisingly wet.

“Will you fuck me?”

Her earnestness belied the crudeness of her request. He smiled and kissed her on the lips. “Do you even have to ask?”

She dropped her gaze but kept touching him. Kissed him too. “I just—I want—”

Unable to finish her sentence, she spread her legs instead. Wide. The action caused one of his fingers to slip between the parted folds. Cradling his face in her hands, she whispered, “I shouldn’t ask for more because. . .because being with you is more than enough, no matter how little the time we have. But I just. . .Jaime. . .I want. . .”

One of her thumbs skated by his lips and he kissed it. “Tell me. It’s yours.”

She bit her lip. “Can’t I have. . .Will you. . .I want you. . .I want some of you to be in me for as long as it lasts.” Her blush almost made her beautiful. “This is perhaps the first and only time being barren isn’t so tragic. I still get you. Only you.”

He touched her cheek, looking in her eyes. “I’m through siring bastards, it seems. Thanks to you. Not that—” he reluctantly pulled his finger out of her sticky warmth to caress her stomach. “Not that I wouldn’t welcome a child with you. In this world, it’s the best thing to have.”

Brienne opened her mouth to speak. He knew what she was going to say. She would love a child with him too.

Yet the words did not come. Rather, the sound of bells left her lips.

“Brienne?”

She laughed and continued speaking. More bells. Heavy, dolorous, ominous sounds. As he tried to make sense of what was happening, someone pounded on the door.

“My lord! My lord! Ser!”

Groaning and clutching one side of his head, Jaime woke up to the sound of those fucking brazen bells. Confused and his head still heavy with images of Brienne from their last day together, he stared like an idiot at the window before falling back on the bed. A pillow dragged over his ear was fucking useless. As the blasted things kept ringing, he roared and threw the pillow at the window.

“My lord! My lord! Ser!” He glared at the door next, where Garrett and Peck’s panicked cries stumbled over each other’s. Throwing aside the furs, he stormed to the door and threw it open.

“What in Seven hells has you two clucking about like chickens to the slaughter?”

The sight of him had stunned the lads into silence. As his sleepy emeralds glinted with the promise of murder or at least, knocking their heads together, Peck picked up his jaw from the floor. Garrett gulped and stared at the ceiling.

Jaime stomped his foot and immediately regretted it. Trying to hide his grimace of pain, he grunted, “You’d best get used that I do without shit bedclothes when sleeping, lads. What’s going on?”

“It’s the bells, my lord,” Peck said quickly.

“Really?” He drawled as the nagging, loud things continued to whip into what should otherwise be a quiet morning. “You don’t say.”

Garrett rolled his eyes at Peck before turning back to Jaime. “My lord, it’s her.” He lowered his voice. “The queen.”

_“My sister?”_

Peck glared at the other boy. “You idiot.” Shaking his head, he told Jaime, “My lord, it’s Daenerys.” His eyes big, he continued, “She-she’s taken Tarth.”

Tarth. Jaime’s eyes immediately went back to the window. The bells kept ringing.

“I’m sorry, my lord. It’s been. . .it’s been the talk in the docks. She’s here. Tarth. . .Tarth is hers, they’re saying.” Peck bowed his head.

Jaime put a hand on the youth’s shoulder, more to keep himself together than to give any reassurances. The gesture had Peck straightening his head. “Find Warek and bring him to me. Garrett, you do the same to our soldiers. I want them dressed and armored when they come here.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

With the lads gone, Jaime hurriedly got dressed. Breeches and tunic. He had secured his coat halfway closed when it hit him. _Tarth is taken._

He saw everything clearly. The mess of his bed. The weak little fires from the fireplace. The cloud of his breath. His breastplate. Boots. He knew what they were. Knew what he must do. But besides his mind battling for sense, his body couldn’t move either.

At the foot of the bed he sank, head in his hands. A heavy pounding, akin to a drum, filled his head.

No. Not now. He couldn’t fall into pieces now. Danaerys may now hold Tarth but it didn’t mean Brienne was—

She had to be safe. Alive. She wasn’t the fighter she used to be but her pigheadedness was enough to drive her into trouncing an army on her own if need be. And Oathkeeper—he musn’t forget that. A ruthless blade that would be wasted on a green knight, its lethal potential unleashed in the hands of someone like Brienne. 

Slowly, he finished putting the rest of the armor on. When he finished he looked out the window.

If Tarth was grim and gray, Estermont was more. Desolate and with darker days and blacker nights, Jaime had trouble distinguishing one from the other in his three days here. Estermont had been an unplanned stop due to another storm. Rather than risk being out in the open water, Warek advised they drop anchor at the nearest port and wait for the storm to pass.

Someone knocked. Hand dropping on the hilt of his sword, he demanded. “Who’s there?”

“You summoned me, my lord,” Warek answered.

Jaime opened the door and the captain sauntered in. Rum emanating from his pores hit Jaime with the force of a physical slap. Peck followed him, looking apologetic.

“You’ve heard?” Jaime asked Warek. Peck busied himself tidying up the mussed bed. His squire’s hands on the sheets distracted him, for he had just remembered that bare hands shouldn’t be touching those. Not in the state he’d left them in.

Dreaming of Brienne always did that, he thought, both infuriated and amused that despite the danger they were in, his cock twitched at the thought of her.

“Aye, my lord,” Warek said, slurring his words slightly. “We can leave in half an hour if you wish.”

“We need more than the usual amount of provisions so we won’t need to make numerous stops replenishing them and putting ourselves at risk.”

“We’ll have to ration then, my lord. It’s the only way.”

“Unthinkable. Your men might be hardy and mine soldiers but if needs be, they must fight. You can’t fight on rations.” Jaime was thinking fast. “Scrub all traces that we sail for the queen.”

His own voice sounded hollow and unreal, faltering at the last word. Warek’s swift reply suggested this was either unnoticed or politely ignored. 

“We will need an hour then, my lord.”

“No more than,” he said firmly. “Scrub all traces. Replace the sails. We’ll be in waters more perilous than ever, Warek. It’s not just storms we have to worry about now. And see to it the next time you’re in my presence, you no longer reek of rum.” He got right in the man’s face, looking him in the eye. “I don’t need to remind you that in serving me, you serve the queen. You will not face her as you are if she were here. I require the same.”

He had expected resistance from the captain. And when the quiet stretched quite long, Jaime thought more trouble was brewing. Instead, Warek bowed his head. “I apologize, my lord.”

“I don’t need an apology. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“You have my word. My lord, I heard what happened in Tarth.” The switch in the subject was clearly an attempt to distract him from displeasure. “Everything burned to ash. I pray ‘tis not true but few survivors have managed to sail into the island.”

“Survivors?” Jaime demanded.

Warek shook his head, understanding what he meant. “I’m sorry, my lord. So very sorry. But none of the survivors came from the castle.”

Because Jaime could only stare at him, Warek cleared his throat and glanced at the door. “If my lord has no need of me now, I shall see to removing all traces we sail for the crown.”

“Go. Just go. We will meet in the ship.” Was all Jaime could say. _No survivors from the castle._

The strength left his legs. His hip missed the foot of the bed, and he landed with a heavy thud on the floor. Pain sprang from his under his ass, and even Peck cried out but Jaime barely registered them. _Brienne,_ he thought. _No. You couldn’t have. You wouldn’t._

“My lord—Ser? Ser Jaime?” It was Peck. His usual scrunched up expression had softened from worry. As Jaime stared at him, he asked carefully, “Shall I—shall I get wine, my lord? And food? Garrett said you barely touched last night’s supper.”

He shook his head and pushed himself off the floor. Wine. Food. He wondered if he’d know what taste was again after today. Perhaps it was just right he was in a place that was practically dead. A world without Brienne—

It was too heart-wrenching to contemplate despite the fact. _No survivors from the castle._

“See to my things,” he managed to order Peck. “And proceed to the ship. You will help the captain and his crew.”

Almost at the heels of Peck’s departure, Garrett returned with the rest of the Lannister soldiers. Jaime kept his orders brief but direct. In those moments it was clear that the longer they stayed in this island, the more dangerous it would be. With Tarth taken and in effect, all of the Stormlands, it was inevitable for Daenerys Targaryen and her forces to arrive here.

There was no question what would happen to them if captured. And if gossip shared by his men was to be trusted, some Houses in the region had already pledged allegiance to Daenerys.

Their only chance was to be in the water as soon as possible.

He had to leave. Run. Away from here. As the realization of what preserving the lives of his men required, he found himself without strength in his legs again. Sitting on the foot of the bed this time, head gripped in hands, the truth sank in. _He had to be away from Brienne._

Alone, his grief was fiercer than torrential storm. The roar torn from his throat was a guttural sound of pain and anger. He shot to his feet and an arm flung at the chairs and table. Goblet and untouched plates of food crashed and exploded into shards on the floor. He screamed through the pain clawing at his heart to dredge every last bit of his soul from the black depths.

_Brienne. Brienne. Brienne._

He slumped on the floor panting. Nails gripping the hardwood underneath.

Of all the ways she could have left this world. A soldier with her strength, a knight with her heart—she deserved better than piles of bricks burned to ash. He had never imagined her gone, never once tried. Too terrible to contemplate—it was a darkness where the very idea of light was extinguished, as well as every trace of good.

He had shed no tears when his mother died. Nor for his two sons. Nothing for Tywin. Even Tyrion. His baby brother was as good as dead. He had no means of protecting himself.

Brienne. For her, Jaime wept like a lost, frightened child.

He should have taken something of hers. A tunic. Her smallclothes, expect she never wore them. A lock of her hair. But he hadn’t and now. . .now there was nothing of her to be with him for the rest of his days. He hoped they were short.

Gods, why did he need her to ask him to stay? He wanted to. She wanted him to. Though their days were numbered at least they were filled with joy. Cersei. . .for all she had done and would do, didn’t frighten him.

He sank to the foot of the bed, face pressed on a blanket that had been straightened and tucked by his squire. Smelling his seed drying on the cloth brought fresh images of Brienne: her eyes half-closed before finding release, the small, shy smile of her thick lips, the freckles at the back of her shoulders, her long, pale fingers wrapping around Oathkeeper. Each memory was another saw of a dull blade into his chest.

When he managed to calm, he staggered back to his feet. The humble little chamber was trashed but nothing that a few coins wouldn’t settle. 

He strode to the bedside table to open the drawer. From there he pulled out a parcel. He trusted his squires but this was too precious. Now more so. Feeling himself about to cry again, he reached inside.

_Starborn._

A hilt studded with sapphire crescents and suns, the ancestral dagger of House Tarth looked more ceremonial than a weapon for war. Brienne had entrusted him to bring it to Lyonel when he visited Ashemark.

It was too fine a gift for a lad of nine but Jaime understood why she needed to give him this. And he was glad he hadn’t questioned her about it. It was now all he, and Lyonel, had of Brienne.

This was why, painful as it was, he had to go on. He tucked the dagger back in its scabbard then parcel before pushing it in the fold of his coat. He didn’t know if he could ever accept her death. Not without a body. Some survivors might still straggle into Estermont.

But he had to go. There was no choice. He had never run from a fight in his life but he was all that Lyonel had now. Him against his sister’s cruel mandate and those desperate to remain on her good side. They might be few but all it took was one swing of the sword to take Lyonel’s life.

And by now, Cersei already knew what had happened. Jaime had sent a raven to Addam upon arriving at Estermont, pressing the urgency of protecting Brienne’s son at all costs. He had yet to receive a reply.

Exactly an hour later, Jaime was back in the water. Gone were the gold and crimson sails, now replaced by worn gray. Anything that hinted they sailed for the crown had been hacked off. The name Sweet Cersei had been chiseled off as well as the roaring lion’s head at the bow. The other intricate details throughout the ship hinting it was a Lannister ship couldn’t be removed without causing severe damage.

Even as the ship continued moving westward, Jaime kept his head turned east.

There it was.

Even from afar and all the gray clouds choking the sky, he saw the smoke rising from Tarth. He could still hear the faint ringing of bells. 

He felt for Starborn under his coat. A promise. A promise to Brienne was all that kept him alive. It was a vow beyond sacred. One he had no intention of breaking.

Another child he must protect. Children were either hurt by his hand or slipped from his grasp, never to be seen again. The Starks. His sons.

Lyonel.

_Mother, keep him safe._

Was there redemption in keeping him safe or did it mean doom? It mattered not. He turned to the sky, searching for blue. He had given Brienne his word. If it were the last thing he would do, to his very last breath he would protect Lyonel. He no longer dreamed of a glorious, heroic death. 

Cersei’s armies didn’t frighten him. But failing Brienne would destroy all good that was left in him. And there was only little. Very little.

Just thinking of what was underneath when all that was gone left him cold. Never had he needed the sun or the smallest sliver of warmth as much until now.

If Brienne were here—

He swallowed and looked into the gray waters. Every now and then, debris from what he guessed was from Brienne’s amphibious force danced and bounced through the waves. He blew into his gloved hands because the leather couldn’t keep the cold away.

If Brienne were here. . .

He closed his eyes. Her presence nearby was enough for the cold to retreat, if only a little.

“My lord.”

It was Warek. Jaime opened his eyes and saw the captain walking toward him. His strides were steady now and his eyes clear. He held out a tin cup. “It will be darker earlier out in the sea. A lot colder too. You’d best get warm. This is no fine spirit like you’re accustomed to, but it will keep all your fingers and toes intact.”

Jaime took the cup from him and sipped. Ale. He was almost accustomed to its bitterness now.

“The waters should clear when we leave the Stormlands, my lord.” Warek continued. “Barring more storms, we might arrive in Casterly Rock in less than a moon.”

“Still not fast enough,” Jaime muttered. Starborn pressed heavily on his chest.

“My lord?”

Jaime shook his head and tipped the cup at him. “You know the waters better than I do. I trust your wisdom. That will be all.”

He had to take many sips of the ale but still could only make it halfway through. As he was about to throw the rest into the sea, someone cried out from the other end of the ship, followed by a commotion. He dropped the cup and went after the crew and his own men.

“Captain Warek! In the water!” One of the crew was yelling.

Jaime looked.

At first, he didn’t understand _what_ it was. A form. Limp. Wet. White. Everyone else must have experienced the same confusion because it took a moment before someone shouted, “It’s a body!”

_A body._

The head moved.

“It’s alive!” 

As Warek hollered orders to secure it, Jaime continued to stare. The body, the person, was clinging to a barrel. Ropes around the thick arms suggested they were used to secure the barrel and remain afloat.

The anchor was dropped, drawing the ship to a halt. A boat was lowered into the water.

The person hugging the barrel looked up.

Jaime’s roar of a name made everyone jump. _“Brienne!”_

His cloak dropped to the floor, followed by the coat. He thrust to a stunned Lannister guard the parcel of the Starborn. He climbed over the edge of the ship and it was Warek who first realized what he intended to do.

_“Ser Jaime, no!”_

Jaime was in the water before the sentence was finished. Sucked into a pillar of wet ice, it burned keeping his eyes open underwater as he thrashed and kicked. He glimpsed Brienne’s legs. The breeches were torn and a foot was missing a boot. He pushed himself back up, bobbing some distance from her. As the ropes holding the boat groaned and strained as the small vessel was lowered, he swam to her.

“Brienne! Brienne!”

She turned to him now. It really was her. The pale hair. Those eyes. As Warek continued to shout about the boat, Jaime reached her. He grabbed one of the ropes around the barrel to pull.

“Brienne.” Salt was in his mouth as he blinked frantically. Her own lips, torn and red, moved.

“Jaime.”

He held her until the boat reached them, rubbing her cold back with his hands as they were pulled back up into the ship. Hands and verbal offers for assistance he ignored as he heaved her up in his arms. Her head lolled heavily to the side, her white arms hanging loosely as he grunted from her weight and the water that clung to her clothes. As he rushed for his chambers, Warek ran after him. The captain yelled for boiled wine, hot water and clean cloths.

Jaime’s gasps had Warek grabbing him by the shoulder. “My chamber is closer. This way, my lord.”

Warek flung the door open and immediately threw the blanket aside. Jaime dropped Brienne on the bed, wheezing an apology. As he caught her breath, Warek quickly got to work.

“My lord, she has to get warm,” he spoke, pulling at her boot. “Help me.”

“Yes.” Jaime muttered, forcing himself to his feet. He was still dizzy from shock and strain. As the captain neatly cut through Brienne’s tattered tunic and coat, Jaime ripped her breeches.

She smelled of the sea, smoke and blood. The blood was strongest from between her legs. Yet there was no visible wound on her thighs and when Jaime examined under the hairs of her cunt found nothing as well. Through it all Brienne moaned and whimpered, although her eyes never left Jaime’s.

“Jaime,” she sobbed.

“I’m here,” he whispered, moving her to the dry side of the bed. He wrapped her in a blanket before undoing the ties of his own clothes. “You’re alright. You’ll be alright. I’m here. You’re here.”

His wet clothes on the floor, he joined her in bed and pulled her to his chest. She was shivering so much that the entire bed was shaking. As he resumed rubbing her back, she pressed her face to his neck and cried.

“You’re safe. You’re really here.” Yet he thought to glance at Warek, fearing the man would be looking at him as if he’d gone mad. Warek did look worried. But not because of him.

That was when Jaime felt them. Then saw. The large, grotesque red burns on the side of Brienne’s face. They trailed from her cheek down to the side of her neck. The tears falling from her eyes made her whimper and hiss from the sting. The marks continued down to her shoulder but they were not as severe.

“Brienne.” He wept now too. She stared at him, blinking numerous times. As if she too couldn’t believe he was real. He kissed her on the forehead. Down her cheek. The burns were smooth bumps that seemed filled with water. She clung to him.

“Boiled wine will not be enough, my lord.” Warek said softly. “I shall see myself if we have honey on board. I heard it could treat burns.”

“Please.” Jaime murmured, still kissing Brienne.

“Am I really here?” She croaked when they were alone. “This is not a dream?”

“No. No, sweetling. Gods, I thought—I thought—”

She managed a weak nod before her face scrunched up as fresh tears rolled down. She cried out. He pulled her tightly to his chest, feeling so utterly helpless as she trembled some more and cried out from the pain.

“Save your strength,” he whispered, caressing her hair. He kissed the top of her head.

“He’s yours.”

As she spoke, her hand rested on his chest. He took her hand. There were fresh cuts on her fingers and palm. As he gently kissed them, she grunted. “Jaime, he’s yours.”

Suddenly, her head fell back. As her eyes began to close, a look of peace settled on her scarred face.

“No.” Realizing what was happening, he shook his head wildly. “Brienne, don’t. Don’t. You’ve just come back to me—”

He picked up her slack hand and pressed it to his cheek. It was cold. As a hiss laced her labored breathing, she whispered, “He’s always been yours.”

“Brienne—no. _No!_ ”

His roars shook the ship but her eyes remained closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The flashback in the beginning of the chapter comes from Jaime's last day in Tarth. This is what happens between Jaime conferring with someone and Brienne's knighting ceremony.  
> 2\. Starborn is House Tarth's ancestral blade. It's made of Valyrian steel. I don't go into detail about it anymore since one of Brienne's previous POVs already did so.  
> 3\. I felt that Jaime's assault by Cersei wasn't really given much thought by him when it was so traumatic. That's why I revisit it here.  
> 4\. I'm not sure about medieval techniques for treating and healing burns. A quick Google showed honey is one of the options. Don't regard it as a valid treatment in real life unless a doctor says so.  
> 5\. Thanks for reading!


	17. Epilogue

“I am so very sorry, my lord. But your lord father is in the hands of the Stranger now.”

Addam barely acknowledged the maester’s words. The latter made a slight bow and excused himself. As the door closed, Addam finally took hold of Damon’s hand. It was still soft. Faintly veined, strong-boned. Nails tipped with faint yellow.

“I am your heir and you’ve taught all you can for when this day shall come,” he said, looking at his father’s sleeping face. “Yet. . .I fear. . .I know I am far from ready. I do not know if I can make the same choices as you have.” 

Damon looked like he was only sleeping. Peaceful. In truth, his eyes had yellowed over the years. Once a man who drew much pleasure in riding, hunting and sparring, diseases slowly spread in his body before confining him to bed the last three moons. The entire chamber reeked of sick but Addam hardly left his side.

Now there was no choice.

In a short while the maester would return to oversee that his father’s body was cleaned and prepared to lie in state at the sept. Addam kissed his cooling hand and another on the forehead. He turned to go but rushed back, this time throwing his arms around him. Tears were for the weak, he was told.

Right now, he not only felt unhinged but also devastated.

Extricating himself from his father was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

It seemed he had walked leagues before finally reaching the door of his chambers. He opened the door to find candles were lit and the fireplace golden with fire. On a pallet at the floor, a young boy stirred awake and quickly got to his feet upon seeing him.

“I apologize, my lord,” the squire said. “But. . .but you have not dismissed me yet today and I. . .I thought might still have need of me.”

He shook his head. “The fault is mine, lad. You should rest. We have a very long day ahead in a few hours.” He patted him on the shoulder then ruffled his pale hair.

But the boy was looking at him, his bright green eyes clearly missing nothing. “My lord, are you sure? Shall I. . .is there something I can get for you? You’ve not had supper.”

His stomach growled, loudly. As Addam sighed, the boy said, almost triumphantly, “I shall get you food, my lord.”

“There is no need—” Addam tried to say but he was too quick. He sighed again staring at the closed door.

Tired yet oddly feeling restless, he undressed and put on a robe. He didn’t want to sleep. To sleep meant he’d accepted his father’s death. To wake up after that was to take the next step.

When his squire returned, Addam was at his desk forcing himself to read parchment after parchment. Something about crops and their low yield. Pests, even in winter. There was also an unopened raven scroll with the seal of the Kingsguard. As Addam wondered why this old seal would be used rather than for the queen, the boy spoke.

“My lord. . .I heard. . .I heard about Lord Damon.” His cheeks flared pink then red. “I am so sorry. The maester’s told me.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He reached for something in his pocket. “He says now is not the time for you to see something such as this but the seal—”

A roaring lion’s head. Only one person in the entire Seven Kingdoms had that seal. Addam held out his hand. “It’s alright. It is from the queen and she knows nothing of my father yet.”

He took the scroll and broke the wax seal.

_Tarth is taken. Failures and betrayals mean debts in flesh and blood. As subject you will collect this debt in the name of queen. Only the heart of the Evenstar will settle this debt to the crown. Deliver within the fortnight or your House will no longer burn bright._

Addam crumpled the letter and pitched it to the fire. His action did not go unnoticed. The lad, who appeared to have just finished setting up the other table for his meal, looked at him with big curious eyes. Addam got up from the desk.

“I shall have the meal now, Lyonel. I’m quite famished.”

The boy gave him another look before nodding. “Of course.”

He pulled out the chair for Addam and turned away to finish another task. Addam stared below the fire, finding no trace of the scroll anymore.

Then he looked at Lyonel and reached for a knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *House Marbrand's words are believed to be, "Burning Bright." 
> 
> See you in the sequel!


End file.
